The Competition
by CardiganDiary
Summary: One of the cardinal rules of any competition: Don't fall in love with your opponent.
1. Chapter 1

_A different language is a different vision of life. – Federico Fellini_

_Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge. – Benjamin Jowett_

**CHAPTER ONE**

For the first time she could remember, Nyota Uhura didn't have any words. She had been standing outside of the toilets (thoughtfully identified as "Ladies," "Gents," and "Others" as they had been for centuries, as if someone had known that the ancient building would someday play host to species so diverse that two genders would be insufficient) in a dangerously crowded pub trying to puzzle out how to make her way back to her table and the rest of the Oxford Linguistics Team without acquiring some sort of intimate knowledge of every person in the place and had finally decided that trying to plan out a route ahead of time was pointless.

Old Bookbinders wasn't usually the party destination of choice for Oxford's student population, which was why she liked the place. The ancient pub was small, with the bar running along the side of a narrow, rectangular-shaped room, and the more open adjoining room housing most of the tables. Capacity was usually 40 to 60 people depending on how many people crowded around the available tables and bar. The walls were built at odd angles, tables were separated by makeshift panels of stained glass, and the ceilings low, with exposed timbers. Ephemera covered the walls, some truly noteworthy and some just strange.

Nyota's favorite display was of radio receivers from the 20th century that served as the current sound system, but she was also taken with the decorations on the ceiling, one of them a giant word puzzle, another a working miniature reproduction of an old Earth locomotive chugging its way around on its track suspended from the ceiling around the bar.

There were old-fashioned, two-dimensional photographs everywhere; an entire wall covered in drink coasters; bottles; signs; ancient newspaper clippings; and a light display made out of PADDs that flashed in time to whatever music was playing. More than one flat surface was covered in antiquated clocks, none of which displayed the correct time. None of the furniture matched, and a couple of the chairs looked like it was only a matter of time before they ate someone. The lighting was dim and comfortable, and the room was warm, making it a refuge from the mist and fog that were typical of Oxford in the middle of March. The beer was plentiful and the food, while not winning any awards, was a step above the usual pub fare.

But tonight was the exception to the rule. Tonight, the Oxford Linguistics Society hosted its unofficial welcome party for the competitors at the annual Oxford Linguistics Invitational, and the pub was filled to the rafters with students from universities all over the world. And not just human ones. At least half a dozen other species were represented that Nyota could see. Beings with a love of language and the science that went into the study of it.

She had stood at the far end of the two-room tavern just outside of the toilets, listening to the symphony of words that spun around her, temporarily transfixed by the mix of both Terran and non-Terran languages: standard Federation English, Arabic, Japanese, Vulcan, Low Orion, Andorii, and a stunningly funny attempt at Klingon rendered in a Swedish accent, as well as a couple of languages she couldn't identify.

As she stalled, basking in the conversations around her, Nyota had wondered, not for the first time, if she had made a mistake choosing to study mathematics instead of linguistics. She reminded herself that Oxford was a means to an end, and that she would have more than her fill of xenolinguistics when she began her studies at Starfleet Academy in a year and a half. A background in pure and applied mathematics would only be a benefit when she took the entrance exams. Her extracurricular activities like the linguistics society and her inclusion on the society's competition team would have to be enough until then.

But she'd never get the chance to pursue the long-term goals of deep space exploration, making first contact, and hearing and translating previously unknown languages she'd had since she was 11 if she didn't get started on her short-term objective of crossing the crowded room in front of her. The bar stretched along the room to her left, obscured by people competing for the attention of the barmen working that night. Camped out at the very end of the bar farthest away from her, Nyota saw part of the team from Starfleet Academy; their red uniforms a bright splash in the dim light.

Tables lined the wall to her right, filled with students, those without seats hovering around the perimeters. Most of the sizeable audience around the tables was due to a heated debate raging on linguistic determinism, a hypothesis that the extent of thought was bound by the limitations of a given language. The theory had long been discredited but it enjoyed renewed popularity with every new pre-warp civilization and language discovered. The crowd was passionate, with rebuttal and attack coming from all corners. From what Nyota gathered, they appeared to be having a grand time. Another table had discovered a supply of old parlor games and was engaged in a heated game involving a set of five die, proper strategy, and knowledge of probabilities.

That left a narrow strip of floor between the bar on one wall and the tables along the other leading to the more spacious seating area where Nyota was just able to see her flatmate, Sophie, through the crowd. Well, at least she had a visual.

She stepped out of the alcove where she'd been standing and into the crowd. She slipped through the press of bodies, trying to cause as little disruption as possible with her slow, careful passage across the room. To her left, a girl juggling three pints of beer sailed confidently through the sea of people, which parted to let her pass.

"Coming through!" the girl shouted, and Nyota altered her course to follow in her wake.

Her progress was much quicker drafting off the girl with the beer, who appeared to be clearing the way with little more than attitude and the fact that she was transporting alcohol. Nyota was squeezing between the red-clad contingent from the Starfleet Academy and the ever more hotly contested dice game when her luck ran out.

One of the guys playing dice leapt to his feet as his opponent rolled a seemingly impossible five of a kind with a single toss. He blindly shoved his chair behind him, causing the people standing there to scramble out of the way. In the rush, a girl who hadn't moved fast enough tripped over the moving chair, sprawled into the person next to her, and sent his drink flying, further scattering the crowd.

Despite her caution, Nyota was pushed roughly towards the bar, and she stumbled gracelessly into the nearest cadet. She was so startled, she lost her footing and would have fallen if not for the warm hands that reached out to grip her bare arms just above the elbows. The last coherent thought she had when he touched her was how hot the cadet's hands were.

And then…nothing.

The interwoven threads of language and numbers that constantly played in the back of her mind dissolved, and the world went alarmingly silent. Her breath quickened, and she jerked away from the cadet who continued to steady her, instinctively looking for a way to escape. But the young man held her in place, his fingers tightening on her arms.

"Please, calm yourself."

His voice was soft. Too soft for her to have heard easily through all the noise around her, but every word had been clearly audible, as if they were alone in a quiet room. Nyota pulled in a deep, steady breath at the sound of the cadet's voice, at the sound of his words, and slowly exhaled. She looked up and dimly registered the dark, upswept brows and pointed ears that marked the cadet as Vulcan. His eyes were softer than she would have expected and that were surprisingly human-like.

"Are you injured?" His tone was vaguely inquisitive, and to her horror, Nyota realized he expected a response. She closed her eyes and drew in another breath, willing her heart rate to slow down.

"No." She wasn't sure where the word had come from, and her voice was barely a whisper, but she was thankful she hadn't just stood there, dumb and gaping. "Thank you. Excuse me."

Nyota took another step away from the cadet, and his grip slowly relaxed, releasing her now that she was steady on her feet. She ducked her head and slipped into the crowd.

As she retreated, she glanced back over her shoulder. The Vulcan cadet was watching her as if she was the only other person in the room, and Nyota stared back, unable to look away. She had nearly convinced herself that she should go back to him, when the cadet standing next to him prodded his shoulder and distracted him. When the tall Vulcan looked over at his companion, Nyota felt whatever strange connection that had formed between them snap, a sharp stinging in the middle of her chest. She stood motionless for a moment and then picked her way through the crowd on shaking and uncertain legs. When she finally reached her table, she was torn between collapsing in her chair and gulping down the remains of her cider or grabbing her coat and running for the door.

As the host team for the competition, the Oxford linguistics team had been holding court at their table in the center of the pub. It was no surprise that her flatmate, Sophie, was surrounded by men, like bees buzzing around a flower. She was laughing and her face was tilted up to catch the light. Her skin glowed, and her pink hair was a fuzzy halo, like a dandelion on a golden, sunny afternoon.

The team's captain, Charlie Spencer, was engrossed in conversation with two of the Cambridge contingent he'd known at Eton. Charlie had introduced her to them over dinner one night the year before. Naresh and Peter, the last two members of the team were well into their often-repeated, three-drink attempt to translate a piece of nonsense poetry by Lewis Carroll from standard Federation English to Welsh and then to English again. They never quite made it through, often laughing too hard in their attempts to find suitable Welsh equivalents for nonsense words that didn't really exist.

When Sophie saw Nyota coming through the crowd, her smile melted into mock exasperation.

"Well, that took a dog's age," she said, her broad, slightly slurring tones betraying her south London upbringing. "Please tell me you were having it off with some goggy tosser you're never going to see again."

Nyota rolled her eyes and took her coat and scarf from the back of the chair where she'd abandoned them when she'd first arrived. She leaned down, her mouth next to Sophie's ear so she could be heard over the din and hoped she'd have something to say. She opened her mouth and snapped it closed when words didn't come. She gnawed at her bottom lip and then closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. "I will see you at home." Her voice was soft, but at least it was there.

"Are you alright?" Sophie asked quietly.

Nyota shrugged on her coat and wound her scarf around her neck. She offered Sophie a weak smile and yanked her hat out of her pocket.

"Tired."

She pulled her hat down over her ears and waved goodbye to Naresh and Peter. Charlie, as expected, didn't notice when she slipped back into the crowd and headed out the door.

-oOo-

The short walk from Bookbinders to the place Nyota shared with Sophie was chilly, but other than a light veil of mist, the night was mercifully dry. She climbed up to their flat on the second floor and pressed her hand to the entry sensor. Inside the door, she pulled off her coat and hat and hung them with her scarf on one of the hooks that lined the wall.

Even though Nyota had remotely activated the flat's lighting and environmental systems on the walk home, it was only slightly warmer than outside. Without her coat, she shivered, and she programmed the heat up a few more degrees from the main control panel on the wall as she considered what to do next.

Her thought processes seemed to be unaffected by her encounter with the Vulcan cadet, her mind spinning in its own form of mentalese, but she was still having trouble finding words. She paced across the living room and stopped in front of the windows that overlooked a courtyard at the back of the building. It had started raining just after she made it inside, and fat, wet drops spattered against the glass.

She closed her eyes and rubbed the spot between her eyebrows that creased when she frowned, feeling the two vertical lines that indented her skin when she was pensive or angry or frustrated. She thought about calling her parents, but it was the middle of the night at home in Kitui, and was she supposed to say? That she was having problems with words? That when she opened her mouth to speak, she wasn't sure if anything would come out? No, that wouldn't worry them at all.

She went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water from the bottle in the fridge and carried it to her room. The flat was starting to heat up, making her feel drowsy and sluggish, and she didn't feel up to tackling anything else. She stripped off her clothes and climbed into bed, still in her underwear and socks, and decided that if she wasn't herself in the morning, she'd make Sophie take her to the medical clinic.

She closed her eyes, only then realizing that the bedside lamp that had come on when she entered her room still glowed. She turned her head and stared at the offending source of light and when she couldn't think of the verbal command extinguish it, she thought about shoving it onto the floor. With a frustrated huff, Nyota rolled over and slapped the light's manual switch, and the room went dark. She collapsed back against her pillow, closed her eyes, and fell asleep to silence.

-oOo-

_So, just a quick note. I've been lurking in and around fandoms and writing fanfictions for years, but this is the first story I've gotten up the nerve to publish. When I first came up with the idea, I figured it would be short, only a couple of chapters. Now, a year later, I've just started chapter 20. All in all, I think this will top out somewhere around 24 chapters and the length of a proper novel. Yikes. Anyway, I hope anyone who reads this enjoys it. I want to thank my beta reader, CB, who's been in this from the beginning. I would have never gotten this far if you hadn't convinced me this wasn't crap._


	2. Chapter 2

_In the dream, she is ten years old (but she would make sure that anyone who asked knew that she would be eleven in less than two months). She knows that even though this is not her house, she is home nonetheless, and this is what tells her she's dreaming. Because she is ten and she has only been coming to the home of her mother's colleague to be tutored by her husband in Modern Vulcan for the past eight weeks, she has not yet begun to consider Torval's well-ordered teaching space as home. That day is still more than a year off._

_She has taken this new study seriously, sensing that this is a privilege that would not have been offered if it had not been felt that she would show appropriate respect for the subject and Torval's time. She feels very grown up working here while Torval's two sons work independently on individual monitors. But not today, and Nyota knows, as you somehow know in the way of dreams, that today she will run home in a desperate rush to beat the tears that she can't control and threaten to break like a storm. She also knows that this will happen later because now, it is vitally important that she understand today's lesson more clearly than any other so far._

_She is reading out loud from a text of ancient Vulcan history. The story describes the rampage of a warrior during the time of the Fury of Vulcan and how he killed nearly 100 people in his own village before dying himself. Nyota thinks the story is sad and horrible and tries her best to portray that in her reading, not realizing that this is her mistake. She is not even halfway through the passage before Torval interrupts her._

_"That is not correct." _

_He looks evenly at her under sharply angled brows, his sandy brown hair worn long and tied neatly at the back of his neck with only the gracefully pointed tips of his ears visible, a break in Vulcan tradition that Nyota never noticed as a child. He recites the passage from memory, and Nyota, surprised at his correction, gives him her full attention._

_"Begin again."_

_Nyota is careful with her second reading to try and match Torval's pronunciation as closely as she is able given her brief exposure to the language, but he interrupts her again._

_"You are distorting the meaning of the passage." His voice is not unkind, but neither is it encouraging._

_"But T'Kahr, I recited the passage the same way you did."_

_"While you may have pronounced the words acceptably, given the limitations of the human vocal apparatus, the meaning of the passage is distorted by your improper emotional interpretation," Torval explains. "It is not enough to merely understand the words and pronounce them within satisfactory limits. You must also understand how a society uses its language to achieve the most effective communication."_

_Nyota feels her face heat and her heart beat faster. She steals a glance at Torval's sons, Tamor and Stivan, as they work on the other side of the room. She is relieved that they have not noticed their father's criticism. And for the first time she sees a third boy, working a series of complex equations on the wall display across from her seat at the work table. He is a few years older than she, and she does not recognize him. The stylus he holds is temporarily still, and Nyota knows that he has heard and absorbed every word of Torval's censure._

_She understands that her teacher is telling her the truth. Not a child's truth. An adult's truth because in this one thing, she is not a child. _

_In her memory, she begins the passage again. Her frustration colors every word she utters. Torval stops her and ends their lesson early, which prompts a desperate rush home in an attempt to reach the privacy of her bedroom before the tears that have been hovering around the edges of her mood all afternoon fall._

_But in the dream, she never reads the passage a third time because the boy on the other side of the table turns away from the wall display and speaks the words in a soft voice full of a neutral gravity she has never heard before, not even when Torval demonstrates proper intonation. And the story of the man who laid waste to a village with a single-minded rage becomes more real and wrenching to her spoken in this unaffected manner than any of the theatrics she was so convinced were needed to express the full tragedy of the tale._

_Nyota looks up and sees that the Vulcan boy has completed the lengthy equation he has been working on. He is looking at her with cool detachment, waiting for her reaction. But it is not the boy's icy demeanor that affects her. Nyota is used to this from Tamor and Stivan. It is his eyes, soft brown and unexpectedly human, that discomfit her the most. It is under this fixed and measured gaze that her tears fall, her frustration with her own failings coursing down her cheeks. The boy's face softens at her distress._

_"Are you injured?" he asks, and she thinks she can make out subtle tones marking his disquiet. _

_With a half swallowed sob, Nyota bolts from the workroom, escaping the scrutiny of the boy and the desperate fear that she has been tested and found inadequate. She runs as fast as she can, trying to put as much distance between herself and the boy as possible._

_She doesn't know how or when it happens, but she is suddenly 19, her current age, and running over the sand and rock of an unfamiliar desert. The sky is orange like it is at home at sunset, but the sun is high in the sky. It is oppressively hot and her breath is coming in quick gasps, as if she cannot draw in enough oxygen. She finds it increasingly difficult to move her limbs against a gravity far greater than what she is used to._

_Nyota comes to a stop, physically drained but still churning inside. Looking around, she sees that she is in front of a smooth patch of sand surrounded by twiggy scrub. She breaks off a dried branch and drops to her knees, the heated ground burning the skin on her bare legs. And she begins to write, scribbling a proof of Samel's theorem of propositional logic in vertical lines of Vulcan script far more perfect in her dream than anything she has managed awake. _

_She is halfway through the proof when the ground beneath her rolls, knocking her forward to sprawl in the sand, obscuring her work. She hears a high-pitched, sharp keening and raises her head from the ground, looking for the source of the noise, as the quaking of the earth becomes more and more violent. She drops back to the ground, covering her head and closing her eyes against the shifting sand, and she fears that the ground beneath her will open up and swallow her._

_And she is suddenly awake._

-oOo-

Nyota opened her eyes in the cool darkness of her bedroom, memories of her dream already fading, the only remnant a vague recollection of mathematical proofs, running, and…oddly…a simplistic discussion of sociolinguistics. Given her anxiety the night before, she wasn't surprised she dreamed of running and math. They were the only two things that calmed her when she felt like she was crawling out of her skin. She had once tried using words to ease emotional disquiet but discovered early on that language was so integrated into her mental process, that exercises like the conjugation of complex verb forms or semantic analysis didn't provide a large enough departure from her usual thoughts to be soothing.

The shrill beeping that had woken her and was continuing to sound was her regular alarm, and Nyota considered rolling over and going back to sleep. But the anxiety carried over from her dream was a hard knot in her stomach and the muscles in her legs twitched with the memory of running in soft, hot sand.

"Shut off that damn noise!" Sophie's muffled voice drifted through the wall, chased by the dull thud of her hand. "Some people are trying to sleep."

Nyota groaned, squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her blankets over her head.

"Alarm off," she said. And after a short pause, "Lights."

She peeled back the blankets, sat up, and swung her feet to the floor. If her legs wanted to run, she'd gladly oblige them. She pulled clothes out of her dresser and did a quick survey of her wardrobe for her running shoes. When she didn't find them in their usual place, she looked around her room.

"Okay," she whispered, mostly to herself but also just in case her shoes had recently grown ears. "Where could you be?"

And that's when it hit her. The words were back. Her words. The knot in her stomach perceptibly loosened, although it didn't dissolve. Nyota resumed the search for her shoes and found them uncharacteristically under her bed where she vaguely remembered kicking them the day before.

As she pulled on her running clothes, she caught her reflection in the mirror over her chest of drawers and groaned. She'd slept with her hair down.

Her hair was long, falling to the middle of her back, and by not taking the extra minute to twist it into a braid before she fell asleep, she had ensured she would wake up to a knotted mess. Nyota piled her hair on the top of her head and secured it. Running would only make it worse but she didn't care. She grabbed her hat and gloves and made a quick stop in the kitchen for a hydration pack which she clipped it to her waistband at the small of her back. She trotted out the door and jogged down the stairs to the building's front door and out onto the street.

The rain that had started the night before continued to drench the city, and the weather was near freezing. Street traffic was light with only the occasional personal transport vehicle cruising past. Nyota took her favorite route towards the city center, past the shops on Cornmarket and off down High Street. Her route took her down residential lanes, over unpaved road, and past parks, churches, pubs, and private homes with their stone fences and foreboding hedges. Using a series of footpaths and bridges, she crossed the Thames and then skirted the river up to the bridge at Abingdon Road, where she picked up The High and retraced her path home.

On any other day, Nyota would have blasted music, but today, she ran in silence and let the cadence of her feet, first on wet pavement, then on muddy paths, set the rhythm for her thoughts. After losing her words the night before, she wanted only them in her head, and she spent the hour out in the rain conjugating Yrevish verbs with their subject agreement markers, tense indicators, and forms noting indicative versus subjunctive mood.

By the time she ran into the square where she and Sophie lived, Nyota was half frozen, wet to the skin, and covered in mud. She let herself into her building, took off her shoes, and carried them up to the flat. She was breathless, and water dripped off her onto the floor and steamed from her shoulders and head in the sudden heat of the stairwell. She keyed the sensor to the door and let herself inside the flat, immediately shedding her shell and depositing her shoes in the boot tray under the row of coat hooks. The time alone with the words in her head had softened the ache in her chest, and she felt, if not at ease, then at least not ready to crawl out of her skin.

"Looks like it's still torrential out there."

Nyota spun towards the unfamiliar voice coming from the dining table. A young man in Starfleet Academy red lounged in a chair, drinking what smelled like the coffee her mother had sent in her last package from home. He was straight off a recruiting poster. His hair was blond, his eyes were the color of green grass, and he had just the right amount of sarcastic smart ass in his smile. He reminded Nyota of Charlie on his worst, most puffed up days, and she instantly disliked him.

"Just a bit," she replied. "I'm sorry, but who are you?"

"I'm Martin." He got to his feet and held out his hand. "Sophie may have mentioned me? She was supposed to comm you."

"Oh." So this was the guy Sophie picked up at the comp last year. Nyota ignored Martin's hand, her new calm slowly dissolving. "That does so much good after I've already gone to sleep."

She dripped her way towards her flatmate's bedroom. "Sophie!"

The other girl came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, fluffing her hair with her fingers. A cloud of steam billowed out the door behind her and drifted down the hall.

"Good morning, Sunshine," she said as she breezed past Nyota and took the cup of coffee Martin held out. "See? I told you she was out trotting through the mud somewhere. Don't let this put you off. She cleans up really well."

Martin laughed. "I thought my roommate was the only person crazy enough to run in a monsoon."

Sensing that she had been dismissed, Nyota padded towards her bedroom, trailing water and mud across the floor.

"It was nice to meet you," Martin called as she closed her door.

Nyota stripped off her wet clothes and traded them for her robe. As she gathered her things from the floor, she heard the front door close and let out an annoyed huff.

"You can come out now," Sophie shouted. "The coast is clear."

Nyota peeked out of her room before she deposited her clothes in the fresher in the hallway and went into the kitchen. "I thought you were going to give me some advanced warning when _we_ had overnight guests."

"I sent you a text. Martin's only in town for a week, and it seemed like a good idea to use our time as efficiently as possible. Tomorrow's our only other free night, and you saw him. His stomach's so flat, you can eat off it, and you can bounce pebbles off that ass."

Nyota closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against her forehead. "Well, I suppose it's nice to know you have some standards," she said and then groaned. "I just said that out loud, didn't I?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that." Sophie sipped her coffee and peered at her flatmate over the rim of her cup. "It was hard to hear you over all that self-righteousness.

"Sophie –"

"Shower first, then clean this up," she ordered, gesturing to the trail of water and dirt leading from the front door to Nyota's room. "We have to meet Charlie and the boys for breakfast in 90 minutes, and it's going to take you most of that to straighten out the nest that's masquerading as your hair. After I have another coffee, I'm heading over to the café to reserve a table. We'll try this again at breakfast, shall we?"

Sophie refilled her coffee cup from the cafetiere on the counter and carried it over to the sofa to watch the morning news feed on the vid screen, and this time, Nyota _knew_ she'd been dismissed.

She took a deep breath and retreated to the bathroom to take a long, hot shower. By the time she scrubbed the mud out of the pores of her shins and finally got her hair untangled, Sophie was gone.

-oOo-

Pret was a bright, automated-service café located in the city center, and the Oxford team met there regularly, mostly because of the prime location. It certainly wasn't because of the food, which was replicated and served by machine. Nyota hurried passed the large front windows to the entrance, closed her umbrella, and ducked inside.

Charlie stood at the head of their usual table, playing king of the castle. He always argued that leadership came naturally to him given his birth, but Nyota thought it was more likely that people just let him be in charge of things because he became a childish ass if he didn't get his way, whether he'd earned it or not.

Charles Spencer was the oldest son of the Earl of Northbury, and he embodied every bad cliché that had ever existed about the British peerage: superior, entitled, arrogant. The real problem with Charlie was that he hid this all behind sleepy blue eyes, dark hair that he constantly fell over his forehead, and a shy but brilliant smile. He was a charmer, and Nyota had dated him for almost four months before she realized that what lay beneath Charlie's appealing surface not only didn't interest her, it repulsed her.

She'd wanted to end things right then, but Sophie had cautioned her about wounding Charlie's ego because he could make it difficult for her to keep having anything to do with the linguistics society. Luckily, it had only taken two weeks of being the worst girlfriend imaginable and a disastrous dinner with his parents to get him to break it off instead. She'd been surprised how easily they'd transitioned to being teammates, so it turned out Sophie had been right.

Sophie, who was putting all of her energy into ignoring her.

"Sorry," she mumbled, glancing around the table. "My morning didn't go as planned." Nyota took the empty seat at the end of the table next to Charlie and shrugged off her coat. She gave him a weak smile as she pulled her ponytail out from her collar.

"I'd take you to task for being late, but you're a vision." Charlie turned and sketched a shallow bow in her direction. Sophie, just out of Charlie's sightline, rolled her eyes to the ceiling, and Pete pantomimed choking himself, his tongue lolling down his chin, and his eyes bulging. Nyota unsuccessfully stifled her answering snort of laughter.

"What?" Charlie spun towards Sophie and Pete, and they rushed to compose themselves, affecting identical guileless, wide-eyed expressions .

"Is it my hair?" Charlie asked. "Am I too well groomed?" His tone was deceptively innocent. "Or is it my trousers? Are they too stylish? Am I so dashingly attractive that no one at this table takes me seriously?" There was no way to take him seriously, the way he was preening and strutting, and Nyota, Sophie and Pete burst out laughing.

Charlie abruptly ended his display and turned to Naresh, who was engrossed in watching something on his PADD. "Pardon me, but I'm being brilliantly funny, and you're missing it."

"Is this the bit about how devilishly handsome you are that it's hard to believe you're so brilliant or the bit about how you're so brilliant, it's unfair to the rest of world that you're so attractive?" Naresh's attention remained fixed on the screen. "Seriously mate, I think it's time you came up with new material."

"Because you and Peter haven't been trotting out the same tired Welsh Jabberwocky routine for the past year." He ran his hand through his hair and glared down at the other man.

"Boys, boys," Sophie broke in. "You're both pretty!"

Naresh had the good grace to look remorseful and removed his earpiece. "Sorry, Soph."

But Charlie wasn't done. His mouth was pulled into a thin line, and he looked just like a spoiled little boy on the verge of throwing a tantrum. Nyota reached out and touched his hand. "Charlie?"

He stood, frozen for a second, and flicked his eyes around the table and nodded. "Well, now that's all sorted, let's get down to the business at hand. I don't think that I need to remind you all that the name of today's game is speed."

_AN: In the rush of getting the first chapter up, I forgot so many things. First, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who read chapter 1, whether you liked it or not and whether it was your thing or not. I really appreciate it and am excited to get the rest of the story out into the world._

_Next, a disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek, so render unto Star Trek that which is Star Trek's, but everything else here belongs to me and is the invention of my mad brain._

_Third, as you may have guessed, this story is set in Oxford, England. I've only been there twice, and one time it was after dark and for the sole purpose of having my picture taken on the grand staircase outside the Great Hall of Christchurch College. Harry Potter fans will understand. So please take anything here about the city, the university, and Britain in general with a very large grain of salt. Also, there are several things here that I just made up or am very aware are wrong (like how Sophie and Nyota live in a block of buildings currently owned by the University). The story's set in the future. It could happen. That being said, if I've gotten anything glaringly wrong, I'd love to hear from someone who knows because I've got quite a chunk to post, and I still have time to fix stuff._

_Lastly, I realized when I was formatting this chapter that I placed the wrong rating on chapter 1. I've changed it to properly reflect the M rating this should have. For anyone who only reads T or lower, I'm so sorry. The M rating is due to two things. First, there will be some sexual content. That happens in the middle, and if anyone wants to take the risk, I'll start putting warnings int he author's notes a couple of chapters before it all starts with a road of what to avoid if you prefer not to read that sort of content. There are also some more mature themes here subject-wise, becoming more obvious as the story progresses._


	3. Chapter 3

The Oxford Linguistics Invitational began as a part of the annual Oxford International Linguistics Conference in 2055. It was originally a small competition for secondary school students in Great Britain covering theoretical, computational, and applied linguistics, but first contact with Vulcan in 2063 brought significant change to the competition.

The contest gradually changed to include a focus on xenolinguistics, which drew interest from institutions of higher education looking for ways to showcase the excellence of their linguistics programs as a way to attract funding and top young minds. Over the years, the competition grew in size and scale, and Oxford University now played host to teams from 40 select universities and institutes from around the planet in a four-day contest.

As the host, Oxford was always represented, but the team's performance had been inconsistent despite the sterling reputation of the university's linguistics, science, and math programs. Other schools traditionally dominated the competition, usually MIT, Kyoto, and the Starfleet Academy.

Competition consisted of four increasingly difficult rounds, one each day. On the first day, teams were required to solve six related linguistic puzzles. This problems weren't difficult; the real challenges were speed and accuracy. Because this first round was the equivalent of a time trial, only the fastest thirty-two teams with the highest degree of accuracy would advance to the second round the following day.

As Charlie Spencer had told his team that morning, the name of the game was speed.

-oOo-

Sophie hated when Charlie was right. The way he strutted around like he had just negotiated lasting peace between the Federation and the Klingons always made her feel like punching somebody. But she'd been a member of the last Oxford linguistics team, and she'd be damned if she was going to let something as insignificant as her personal feelings about the puffed up spawn of a minor member of an outdated system of governance cause her to fuck up the way she had last year.

Charlie was never going to let her forget she'd failed to check the upload accuracy of the main work screens the year before, a mistake that resulted in an incomplete submission at the end of the first round and Oxford's poorest showing in well over a decade.

Her mum always told her you had to make the most out of a bad deal, and Sophie was determined to turn her mistake into something good. She'd swallowed her pride and begged Charlie, who was the newly crowned president of the Oxford Linguistics Society and self-appointed team captain, to let her on the team again. When pleading, cajoling, and flattery hadn't proved effective, Sophie bided her time and waited for an opening. This came about, not surprisingly, as a result of Charlie's own arrogance.

Because of the team's poor prior showings, Charlie had trouble raising interest in the competition from anyone in the linguistics department, let alone attracting competitors from any of the other sciences. His conviction of the superiority of the linguistics department was too off-putting to appeal to students outside of it. But academic diversity was a necessity to excel at the Invitational, something that had been Oxford's weakness in the past, so Sophie offered Charlie a deal he couldn't afford to ignore: She handed him his team, readymade. A team that could win.

Naresh Gowda was doing postgraduate work in bioacoustics as applied to language structure, and he had as little use for Charlie as Sophie did. They had bonded over their shared loathing of the linguistics department's golden boy. At first, she and Naresh had avoided one another, victims of bad first impressions, and Sophie hadn't been surprised to discover he thought she was just a pampered little brat from a wealthy family with nothing more in her head than her next date.

She had assumed he had an enormous stick up his ass.

As it turned out, she was right. Naresh did have a stick up there, just not as big as Sophie had thought. And then one night, over a far too many pints, Naresh had told her about his lengthy separation from his wife, Anjali, a marine exobiologist who was stationed at a research facility on a colony moon deep in the Beta Quadrant. They had been apart for two years and weren't expecting to see one another again until he completed his coursework and joined her at her posting. Sophie knew she'd never hold his serious and quiet nature against him again.

When she made it her mission regain her position on the Oxford linguistics team, she went after Naresh first.

It had taken little enough. Sophie's mother was Rose Lansing, the head of one of Earth's most prominent interstellar import/export houses, so she had arrange for one of the company's scouting vessels to bring Anjali to the nearest Federation transportation hub where she boarded a Lansing freighter headed for Earth.

It had been another thing entirely to keep her purposeful diversion of company resources from her mother. It had taken no small number of credits deposited into the account of the freighter captain in question, parts for his crew's still, some explicit Orion holovids, and a keg or two of Romulan ale to buy some very creative flight log documentation and an impressive amount of silence. It had been a genuine stroke of luck that the scout vessel best able to take Anjali back to her posting was commanded by one of Sophie's oldest friends, the son of her mother's chief executive and her partner in countless childhood adventures.

The venture went off without a hitch, and now, six months after the fact, if Rose knew about her daughter's subverting her trade ships, she either didn't care or was saving the knowledge for use at a future date. Either way, there was no point worrying about a deal already struck, and Sophie resolved to handle it when and if it became an issue. For now, Naresh would do pretty much anything for the person who had brought him his wife, however briefly, and Sophie wanted him on the Oxford team. He never really stood a chance when it came right down to it.

Peter Davies was in his first year at Oxford studying computer programming when he stumbled across the Linguistics Society. He was only 16 and away from his home on the Welsh coast for the first time, and despite his brilliance, he was rubbish with directions. It had been pouring rain, and Pete, who had gotten lost in the gloom, had ended up in Christ Church's junior common room during a revision session. Someone had assumed Pete was there for the session and offered him some tea and a biscuit, and he'd been too wet and cold to argue. He'd ended up staying and came back for the next session even though he wasn't taking any linguistics courses, as interested in the science of it all as the promise of regular access to free baked goods.

While Pete wasn't a linguist, he could analyze patterns and could spot irregularities in those patterns almost before he looked at them. Those were assets Sophie felt were invaluable. She had fussed over him and teased him like he was one of her younger cousins. Pete, who came from a large family, had embraced the familiarity and agreed to join the team as much for the friendship as for the challenge.

Nyota had been the one Sophie had been the most concerned with. She and and the other girl had met at the beginning of the prior academic year at the first Linguistics Society meeting and had quickly become friends. Over that year, Sophie realized Nyota had an exceptionally good ear, and unlike her, could reproduce nearly any sound that the human larynx was capable of making. She absorbed languages and could interpret language patterns almost instinctively.

Sophie had watched her friend's disastrous decision to start dating Charlie even though she'd advised her against it without comment. She'd been there with wine and sympathy when Nyota had shown up on her doorstep one night looking a little lost after dinner with Charlie and his parents where the conversation had enthusiastically turned to the natural superiority of the human race over other species and how human progress had been set back generations by the iron grip Vulcans held over the Federation Council. From what Sophie could work out, the evening had ended when Nyota and Charlie had argued over her plans to join Starfleet after she was finished at Oxford, and she had walked out in the middle of dessert claiming a headache.

Sophie supposed she should have been more surprised by this revelation. Nyota certainly had been. Halfway into their second bottle of wine, Sophie had to take her comm away from her to keep her from dumping Charlie by text. Nyota was better than that, and she wasn't about to let her give Charlie any evidence to the contrary. Fortunately, Charlie wasn't better than that, and when Sophie had given the other girl her comm back the next morning, he'd already left her a message breaking things off.

Nyota had been quiet for a long time, her hand clapped over her mouth, and Sophie had been afraid she was truly upset. And then she'd laughed and confessed that the relationship had started to crumble pretty early on, and she couldn't be more relieved it was done with. By breakfast, the girls had planned for Nyota to move into Sophie's spare bedroom at the beginning of the next academic year.

She'd asked her to be on the team their first morning as flatmates and had been prepared for a lengthy battle of wills, but she'd said yes right off. Sophie hadn't been entirely sure Nyota hadn't agreed because she still had a thing for Charlie, but after watching them work closely together over the last six months, she hadn't seen either of them show any interest in getting back together. As it turned out, she'd said yes because Sophie was her friend and she had asked.

When Sophie approached Charlie a second time, she'd presented him with the team he had been unable to put together, and it was a done deal. The five of them functioned surprisingly well, complimenting one another's strengths and shoring up the weaknesses, and after working together for the past six months, they were operating pretty seamlessly, particularly when it came to diffusing conflict.

-oOo-

After breakfast, Sophie and Nyota headed over to the competition hall to sign in and begin preparing the Oxford team's assigned work area. The hour allotted was barely sufficient time in Sophie's opinion. Her checklist seemed endless, and it would only get longer after the first round because after that, there would be sound equipment for the audio questions to deal with. .

Sophie reviewed her hard-copy prep list as they walked and watched the other girl stew out of the corner of her eye. Nyota had dug her hands into the pockets of her coat and was chewing the inside of her lip, looking anywhere but at Sophie.

"Come on, you know you want to say it."

Nyota sighed, her cheeks puffing out with the force of her breath.

"What was that? I didn't hear," Sophie said, not looking up from the paper she studied.

Nyota looked at her and then rolled her eyes towards the sky. "Sorry."

"For?"

"Calling you indiscriminate in your choice of sexual partners." Nyota grumbled.

"Exactly. I'm very careful who I let in there. Sorry for not giving you more warning about Martin."

"I thought you weren't seeing him until tomorrow night."

"I wasn't. But he was at the pub, and he was just as hot as last year, and I needed something to take the edge off. You've seen the list," she wailed and waved the paper in front of the other girl.

"I'm helping you with the list. We all are."

"I know, I know." Sophie stuffed the paper into her jacket pocket. "I just…I can't cock this up again. Mum will never let me hear the end of it."

Nyota looped her arm through the other girl's and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "It'll be fine. We'll all be fine."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Sophie exhaled as they climbed the front steps of the competition hall and shifted her shoulders to loosen the tension that had slowly built up between them. This wasn't the first time she and Nyota had butted up against one another, and their friendship was fine. On the bright side, Nyota's cooperation in whatever mad schemes she came up with was all but assured for the next several weeks. All she would have to do was utter the magic words: You owe me. There were more important things to focus on now.

-oOo-

Rowling Hall was built by Christ Church College in 2097 after a generous donation from the estate of a well-known children's author. The walls were ringed by rows of reconfigurable seating beneath soaring arched windows and a buttressed ceiling that reflected a holograph of the night sky. It had been designed as a visual companion to the college's Great Hall, where students still took their meals, but on a much grander scale and was a popular site for academic competition.

For the Invitational, the floor was separated into 40 individual work areas. Each area had a work table, two transparent vertical work screens and a display screen. PADDS networked to the work and display screens were provided for each team member, and no personal tech was allowed on the competition floor. This made the scant prep time vital because the PADDs had to be configured to each team member's preferences, network connections needed to be checked, and equipment sensitivity and connection tested.

As she and Nyota reached the Oxford team's work area, Sophie panicked. The rest of the team wasn't there. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Naresh and Pete should be collecting the team's verification chip, which would be used to validate their submitted answers, so they wouldn't be in the work area yet.

Charlie was only responsible for calibrating his PADD, so he didn't need to be there and would probably just get in the way if he was. And Sophie thought she had glimpsed him chatting up the same chesty blonde from UCLA he'd been sniffing around the night before as she and Nyota had threaded their way across the competition floor. They were all where they were supposed to be, so it was time to get to work.

Sophie started by syncing the PADDS to one another, and when she finished, she handed one to Nyota so that she could adjust it to her personal preferences. Her teammate scribbled figures in Kanji and then switched to the more sweeping figures of Arabic before she sent her work to the main screens to verify it transferred correctly.

"It's great, Sophie. Thanks."

"Sure." Sophie grabbed her own PADD and smoothed out her prep checklist against the table top. She ticked off the tasks they had completed on the touch-sensitive paper, reviewed the items they still needed to address, and took a quick look around.

Nyota was leaning against the work table pretending to readjust her PADD, but Sophie could see that she was peering up through her eyelashes at something just out of Sophie's sight range. She glanced over her shoulder and found herself staring into sea of dark red.

The Starfleet Academy's assigned position was only two positions over, and while she couldn't see Martin, Sophie had a clear view of his Vulcan teammate. Spock, or something like that. Martin had introduced the tall Vulcan the night before at Bookbinder's, and she had recognized him as the man Nyota had been knocked into on her way back from the loo. Sophie smiled and glanced back at her flatmate, who was still working very hard at looking busy, and went back to her list. She barely heard Nyota whisper.

"Oh, this is inconvenient."

"What is?"

Nyota started, as if she had forgotten the other girl was just a few feet away. "Nothing," Nyota mumbled. "I'll tell you later."

"This doesn't have anything to do with last night, does it? It's not like you to run away from a party that early."

"I'm fine. It was just loud and crowded, and I guess I wasn't in the mood." Nyota put down her PADD and tore open the sealed package of styluses that had been provided and began checking them for glitches.

"That was a pretty nasty tumble you took before you left. Maybe that had something to do with it? Although that cadet you crashed into was definitely worth the trouble."

"It was nothing, Sophie."

"If you say so." Sophie concentrated on configuring her own PADD and feigned indifference. "I was just wondering if that's why you were speaking Vulcan when you said goodbye."

"What?" Nyota looked up sharply and caught Sophie's sleeve. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "No, I wasn't speaking Vulcan."

"Yes, you were, but if you didn't even know what language you were speaking, I guess you really did need to get out of there."

"Sophie, I'm fine."

"Good." She fixed Nyota with a hard stare. "Now stop drooling over tall, dark, and stoic over there and make sure that the screens are working properly. And test them to make sure they register corrections and proofing accurately."

Nyota's mouth worked soundlessly for a minute, and Sophie turned her back to hide a smirk. She probably couldn't decide which statement to argue against. "I'm not drooling," she said finally.

"Are you kidding? I'm ankle deep in it. It's a shock I haven't slipped and broken my neck. You know, this is why I tried to set you up with my cousin David when he was in town last week."

"Is it really?" Nyota asked, her voice flat and humorless.

"Yes, I knew you wouldn't be able to control your hormones in the middle of all of this scientific prowess, and I was hoping he'd help take the edge off."

Nyota grabbed a stylus from the neat rows she had laid them in and crossed to the screen closest to the work table without responding.

"But of course," Sophie continued. "You were too busy revising first-order logic to meet him, and now look at the fix we're in. You're hot and bothered and, to be quite honest, a right bitch, and _that_ is only steps away." She waved her hand towards the Vulcan cadet. "If you're rubbish today, it's not my fault."

"I think you're overreacting." Nyota tapped the stylus she held against her chin and stared at the screen. She began to work what Sophie vaguely recognized as an equation in jagged and disjointed characters. Orion trader's script, she thought. Best language for sums, really.

"Ordinarily, I'd tell you to jump him, but do Vulcans even have casual sex?"

Nyota stopped writing, the stylus still hovering over the screen. "Why are you asking me? How would I know?"

"Oh, that's right," Sophie said, as if she were suddenly remembering something important. "You don't actually know any Vulcans, do you? One of these days you'll have to explain to me how you speak the language so bloody well then." She returned to her list and was satisfied that other than the screens and the remaining PADD check, they were only waiting on the verification chip Naresh and Pete should be collecting at the check-in desk. "I don't see what the problem is. He's exactly your type."

"I have a type?" Nyota had resumed covering the screen in the complex formula she had started, but her attention was clearly divided. "Please, enlighten me."

"I thought you'd never ask." Sophie perched on the work table, her tone deepening as she warmed to her subject. "Tall. Dark hair. Brilliant, knows it, doesn't downplay it. Let's face it, you like a bit of arrogance. But not too much, either. Too many shades of Charlie, shall we say? Oh, and emotionally unavailable. That's important."

"Excuse me?" Nyota stopped writing again and glared at Sophie. "Is this about this morning? Because you forgave me for that, remember?"

"No, I didn't. I accepted your apology. That's different. You still owe me for this morning."

"I don't go looking for emotionally unavailable men." The equation on the screen, temporarily forgotten, glowed blue.

"That's where you're wrong." Sophie swung her legs back and forth like a little girl. "You run as far and as fast as you can from anything that'll interfere with Starfleet. How often do you talk to your family?"

"That's not fair." She blinked at the formula on the screen in front of her.

"But it's true." Sophie hopped off the table and stepped into Nyota's line of sight. "Point is, I've watched you ignore any number of suitable men, and who did you stay with for five months? Charlie, the biggest git I've ever met. And you know the only reason you're not still together is his…total distaste, shall we say…for anything that comes from off world."

"That's putting it lightly." Nyota finished filling the screen and keyed her PADD to upload the information into the team's submission folder. "I don't understand why you're always so concerned about setting him off."

"I know better than to say anything that could piss off a man who may someday have influence over regulating my mum's business," Sophie said archly. "And now the world sees fit to drop _that_ in your lap. I couldn't have invented a better one-nighter for you. He checks all your boxes, and that pun is intended, by the way."

Nyota crossed to the second screen and began writing again, this time scrawling graceful vertical columns. The script curled and twined its way down the screen, almost like musical notation. Sophie wondered if Nyota even realized that she'd switched from trader's script to Vulcan.

"Who are we talking about?" Charlie's voice was loud and cheerful in Sophie's ear. She snapped her head in his direction as he peered over her shoulder, her heart pounding wildly. "Shit, Charlie."

"How are we doing on time?" Clearly, he didn't expect an answer to his first question.

"Pretty well. Nyota's testing the screens, and you and the boys need to configure your PADDs. Then we're safe as houses."

"Good." Charlie surveyed the room. His eyes slid over the team from Starfleet Academy but then drifted back to Martin's roommate. The Vulcan was watching Nyota as she worked on their second screen. Charlie's squinted, and then moved to stand next to her. "What's this nonsense you're writing?"

"A mathematical proof."

"And what language is that?"

Nyota hesitated for a second. "Vulcan. It tests a lot of the graphemes that might come up and verifies that the board records and uploads them correctly."

"Is that necessary? Couldn't you use some human language?" His tone was almost too casual.

"It's an efficient way to test the screens. Look around. Most of the other teams use non-Terran languages, too."

"Well, all right then. Good," he said, reaching for the PADD Sophie held out. "What's this?"

"You need to adjust the settings and test the transfer accuracy."

"We're here," Pete gasped as he ran into the work area. He slapped his hands down on the table to try and slow his momentum but still crashed into it. Naresh followed at a more leisurely pace and handed the verification chip to Sophie who installed it into Nyota's PADD. The same chip would provide the validating codes for the team's submissions throughout the competition, and she was the only member of the team participating in all four rounds.

"Check your PADDs," Sophie instructed them. "And Naresh, you'll want to check the screens to make sure that they recognize your writing and upload the screen contents properly. We only have a few minutes before the monitoring fields go up. And Pete, please don't forget that after the fields are live, you can't step outside of the boundaries or we'll be disqualified."

"Got it." Pete skirted the table to take a PADD but tripped over one of its legs and stumbled just outside the work area.

"Pete! Be careful!"

"Sorry, Sophie."

"All competitors report to their assigned work areas." The smooth, feminine voice broadcast throughout the hall. "The first round of the 2253 Oxford Linguistics Invitational will begin in five minutes."

* * *

><p><em>AN: I own no part of Star Trek as evidenced by the fact that I am not independently wealthy. I do this for love, not money.<em>

_Just a quick note to say thank you again for the support. I've been a little nervous about these last two chapters because they're a little light on Spock, but that's soon coming to an end. Anyway, this is going to be the last update before Christmas, and I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season._


	4. Chapter 4

"The night-crow cries and the raven rooks her on the chimney top, foretelling of bloodshed and battle to come." Charlie's brow creased as he read the message he had just received from his PADD, and his expression grew increasingly perplexed. "What's this nonsense? It reads like bad Shakespeare."

Following their completion of the first round of the competition, the Oxford linguistics team had gathered at a nearby pub for lunch to wait for the results. They had eaten crammed around a small table in a dark corner while Charlie and Sophie had reviewed, replayed and analyzed the round and had just finished when Charlie's comm chimed, ending any further discussion.

"I think it is Shakespeare," Sophie answered, peering across the table at the moving image of large, black birds scavenging flesh from a field of fallen soldiers that accompanied the overworked text of the message. "Go on. Finish it."

"God help us all when mathematicians try to be literary." Charlie shook his head and resumed his recitation. "Make wing to the rooky wood as the good things of day begin to droop and drowse and proffer up the one among you more full of words, more perfect in the use of logic, whose knowledge of syntax is strong and ear, the best. Let fly the crows of war and when the hurly-burly's done, when the battle's lost and won, one will stand victorious and smooth success be scattered at their feet. Will you be a champion or will you be a feast for crows? The battle commences tonight at 19:00 hours at The Rookery. Arrive early for sustenance and succor."

He turned to Nyota, his mouth drawn up as if he had tasted something sour. "Exactly how drunk where they when they came up with this?"

"You don't want to know, but Jem and Conrad were pretty pleased with themselves for a couple of days afterwards."

"Am I the only one who's confused?" Pete asked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Pub quiz," Sophie chirped as she wrested Charlie's PADD from him. "It's put on each year by the maths society for the teams that make it to round two. Last year's was pretty fun. It had a Roman gladiator theme. There's food and drink, and those of us who aren't doing the solo round get a bit of a break. I've explained this all before."

"I might not have listened. What do we do?"

"That's the beauty of it. _We_ don't do anything. It's all on _that_ one," Sophie explained, pointing at Nyota. "Tonight's a preview of what we can expect from the solo round tomorrow. That's what this middle part means." She tapped the screen of Charlie's PADD. "The solo competitors go one-on-one against each other until there's only one left."

"Wait, it's a fight? Wouldn't we want Charlie to do that?"

"And Davies has lost the plot again," Charlie sneered.

Nyota gave him a flat look and turned to Pete. "You're right. Charlie's most likely to come out on top in a fist fight…"

"Well, thank you," Charlie interjected. "I do try to keep fit."

"…mostly because he fights dirty…"

"Hey!"

"…but it's not an actual fight." Nyota laughed at Charlie's exaggerated pout. "It's also not a human sacrifice or a beauty contest. Those have all been themes."

"The maths society is very big on themes," Sophie supplied and slid Charlie's PADD back to him.

"It's just a truncated version of the solo round." Nyota reached across the table and swatted at the other girl. "We're paired off in brackets based on how well the team did overall last year. Oxford didn't do well at all. Sorry Sophie, I know that's a sore spot. So I'll probably go up against Harvard or Edinburgh first. They were near the top last year and we were what? Thirty-third? It's a single question under limited time. Whoever gets it most right moves on to the next round."

"That's brilliant. I'm aces at showing up."

"It's lots of fun," Sophie continued. "We eat, we drink, we socialize, we provide moral support for our comrade in the trenches not limited to heckling the other teams and shouting out the answers if we know them. It's all very uncivilized."

The invitation to the pub night hosted by the Oxford mathematics society, the Invariants, was usually the first notification a team received that they made it to the second round, often before the official results were circulated. In all the years of the pub night, no one had been able to figure out how the society got hold of the results, but the invitation was generally received a good half-hour before the standings were announced publicly. Nyota thought it was because her department was populated with some pretty talented hackers.

Charlie's comm chimed again, and the table quieted as he checked his messages.

"Well, that was from MacAllan." He paused dramatically to let the information sink in. Horace MacAllan was the head of the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics and the team's adviser.

"And?" Sophie's tone was sharp and impatient.

"Come on, Charlie," Nyota said. "Stop teasing."

He rose from his chair at the head of the table. "We're in third place."

"Oh, thank god." Sophie sighed in relief.

"You're welcome," Charlie replied as he turned his attention back to his comm. "MacAllan wants us at The Rookery no later than half six. He's planning on staking out a table near the front with Dr. Duncan. That gives us nearly five hours. Has anyone got any suggestions?"

"We should head home." Sophie turned to Nyota who nodded in agreement. "Don't worry, we'll be there early enough."

"Yeah, Charlie," Naresh said as he gathered his coat. "We're all adults; we don't need to be sat upon."

"Well, alright then," Charlie responded, his tone broadcasting his dissatisfaction with his easy dismissal. "I'll just meet MacAllan early. If anything changes, I'll keep you informed." He threw on his coat and glided out the door.

-oOo-

"This place looks like a cross between a dungeon and an aviary in hell."

It was Nyota's first time at The Rookery, and from the look of things, it would also be her last. The pub was a cavernous space carved out of the ground floors of an entire block of buildings at Oxford's center. The place catered exclusively to tourists searching for a "real British experience," so of course, it was nothing of the sort. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the pub were clad in a veneer of dark stone with timber supports. Flickering torchlight provided by artfully placed holos gave a sinister quality to the iron-clad wooden tables, chairs, and booths; and the barmen and other staff were outfitted like escapees from an S&M club, all black leather and silver chains.

And then there were the birds. Holos of ravens and crows fluttered on ledges and perches throughout the room. They pecked idly at the bar and congregated in and on large, iron cages throughout the pub. Nyota flinched at a loud caw in her ear, and she spun to find herself eye-to-beady-eye with a ghostly mass of black feathers, settled firmly on the top of a marble bust of an American writer.

"Nevermore," the bird croaked. Then the hologram flickered, and the image's action loop restarted from the beginning.

"There." Sophie grabbed Nyota's elbow and pointed towards the end of the room where there was a large stage. Naresh and Pete sat with Professor MacAllan and the head of the Oxford University Mathematics Institute, Dr. Marcus Duncan. MacAllan was gesturing grandly, and his red cheeks betrayed an afternoon spent with a pint in his hand as he guarded the team's prime position near what would soon be the center of the action.

Pete had been staring around the room and spotted the girls. He waved as Nyota followed Sophie through the room and shed her coat and hat.

"There's my girl," MacAllan boomed. He surged to his feet to give Sophie a fatherly hug. "Best first round showing Oxford's had in a decade, Miss Lansing. Excellent, excellent work."

"Thank you, sir." Sophie glowed at the praise, and Nyota suspected she'd been forgiven for her lapse the year before. "Now, can I buy you and Mr. Gowda a drink?"

Nyota shared a smirk with Pete at MacAllan's familiar refusal to acknowledge them.

"Come now, Horace," Duncan broke in. "You know this is a hosted bar. Let's both go and bring back a round for the table. You are legal, aren't you Davies?"

"Eighteen, sir. Thank you."

"Of course. Be back in a tick. Follow me, Horace." Duncan led MacAllan towards the bar.

"I see MacAllan is still pretending that Pete and I don't exist," Nyota said as she draped her coat over a chair and sat down.

"He hasn't looked at me once, and I've been here for a half hour. If it hadn't been for Dr. Duncan, I don't think he would have let me sit down," Pete replied.

"Oh, it's not that bad," Sophie said, sitting next to Nyota.

"Yes, it is," Nyota told her. "You just don't see it because you like him."

"It's not that," Naresh said. He shifted towards Nyota. "You and Pete just don't count because you both have the audacity to study something other than linguistics."

"Yeah," Sophie agreed with a wicked grin. "You're interlopers."

"Interlopers?" Nyota fixed the other girl with a threatening stare. "You know, I can just go home, and you can fend for yourselves tonight."

"Oh, no you don't. Naresh, hold her down while I find some rope."

"Who are we tying up?" Charlie sauntered up to the table, acting for all the world like he was lord of the manor. "Could it be Sophie? That would be tops."

"Ha ha," Sophie muttered and then added under her breath, "Smarmy git."

"I'm sorry. What was that?" Charlie leaned over her.

As they bickered, Nyota's attention drifted to the activity in the room around her. The gathering wasn't much different than the one the night before at Bookbinders, other than the presence of the numerous Oxford faculty members, the academic advisers for the visiting teams, and a small horde of maths students taking advantage of the free food and beer. At least MacAllan was already firmly in his cups, so it was less like being chaperoned and more like babysitting your wayward, drunken uncle.

She was distracted from her thoughts by two sets of flailing arms. Two of her college mates, Jasper King and Randy Stewart, were up on the stage, waving at her, and she raised her hand in response. It looked like the boys, who were two of the organizers of this year's quiz, were having trouble setting up the work screens and monitors for the challenge. A third man was on the stage, but he was stretched out under the central monitor that had been set up specifically for the quiz, and all Nyota could see of him were the soles of his black boots. Jasper motioned for her to come up to the stage, but she shook her head and turned to take in the rest of the room.

Part of the Starfleet Academy team was at a table near the center of the room. Two female cadets Nyota had seen that morning sat side-by-side, deep in conversation and senseless to the activity around them. She looked around for the rest of the team and spotted a tall woman in a black uniform emblazoned with the Starfleet insignia at the bar talking to Dr. Duncan while MacAllan nodded vacantly and sipped a pint of ale. Duncan gestured animatedly, and the woman laughed. That must be the Starfleet faculty adviser. A lean Andorian cadet with shockingly bright silver hair was seated a few tables over, engaged in a seemingly heated debate with two students from Kyoto, his antennae poised and alert.

She didn't see the Vulcan cadet or Sophie's friend Martin, and she half-hoped neither of them were there. She was still irrationally resentful of Martin for being at her flat that morning, but if she was honest with herself, the Vulcan was the larger problem.

She'd watched him that morning and decided he wasn't _that_ good looking. His nose was large and blunt, and his mouth had a funny tilt at the corners that made him look like he was constantly amused by something, which was incongruous to the somberness in his eyes. Sure, he was tall, but his thin, lanky frame made his arms and legs look too long for the rest of him.

But his hands had been quick and sure and graceful as he'd filled the screens in his team's work area with line after line of flowing script, and she'd remembered how strong they were when he'd caught her and kept her on her feet the night before. Her heart had been beating so hard and so fast, she hadn't heard half of what Sophie said to her as they'd prepped the team's work area that morning.

Nyota felt ridiculous. She hadn't reacted to a guy like that since she was 15. And then Sophie had caught her staring which had been even more embarrassing.

She scanned the crowd again. Where was he?

"He's over there." Sophie had finished her skirmish with Charlie, and given the acerbic tone of her voice, she'd been on the losing end of the exchange.

Nyota jumped, and her breath caught in her throat. She turned to the other girl and swallowed to force her heart back into her chest where it belonged. "Don't do that. And who?"

Sophie rolled her eyes and pointed towards the stage. "Up there. Looks like your mates from the maths department put him to work."

Nyota looked up at the stage. Jasper and Randy had indeed pressed the Vulcan cadet into service. He was just closing the access panel on the side of the display at the center of the stage, and the screen glowed as it finally came to life. The cadet used a PADD to run a series of tests on the monitor, and as she studied him, Nyota reconsidered her opinion from that morning.

As the cadet worked, Nyota was again drawn to his hands. They were large and neat, and his movements were spare and efficient. His long fingers danced confidently on the surface of the PADD he held.

His dark eyes were sharp and intelligent, and she thought there was something about them that softened both the severe lines of his traditional straight-lined haircut and the sharp angle of his brows. She imagined what a trial his unintentional half-smile must be for someone who was defined by emotional control. His skin was pale, and the contrast with his black hair was shocking.

She'd been wrong. He wasn't just good looking. He was beautiful. Her heart beat a little faster watching him, and an ache slowly formed there, a longing for something that she couldn't put a name to.

Nyota was so wrapped up in her observation of the cadet she didn't notice Professor MacAllan return to the table alone and deposit a tray of full pint glasses in the middle. She blinked in confusion when a glass of fizzy water was set down in front of her.

"Here, drink this," Sophie told her with a hint of laughter in her voice. "I think you're overheating."

"Will you stop that? I'm not overheating."

"Of course not. I don't suppose you've paid any attention to the nonsense going on here?"

"What now?"

"Apparently, Charlie is now taking sole credit for our success in this morning's round, the discovery of electricity, the development of interstellar travel, and evolution in general."

"Does this really surprise you?"

"No, not – "

The piercing screech of audio feedback over the pub's sound system cut off the rest of her reply. Dr. Duncan stood in the center of the stage using his comm to tie into the audio system to amplify his voice.

"Well, I hazard to guess that answers the age old question: Is this thing on?" Laughter rippled through the room as the audience settled and people directed their attention to the stage.

"My name is Marcus Duncan, and I'm the head of the Mathematics Institute. Before I turn things over to our Masters of Ceremony for the evening, I wanted to say a few words. First, welcome to The Rookery and congratulations for surviving the first day of the Invitational."

The crowd whooped and cheered, and Duncan held up his hands and raised his voice over the noise. "I would encourage each and every one of you to please take advantage of the hosted bar and the tremendous buffet. There are a large number of students from my department in attendance tonight, and I can say from experience that they are always hungry, so if you wait, you may find yourself wanting." More laughter chased Duncan's comments.

"Too late," came a cry from near the food tables, and cheers rang out through the room again.

"Good to know that you apply yourself to something, Mr. Witt, because it certainly isn't your schoolwork," Duncan responded. His words were punctuated by hoots of approval and good natured applause.

"Ordinarily, I do this bit about the University's spotty performance at the Invitational over the years and how this spawned the great tradition you're all about to be a part of. To be quite honest, we Invariants genuinely appreciate watching the best our linguistics program has to offer get spanked at this year after year."

"I say, Marcus," MacAllan called, rising to his feet. "Speaking of spanking, I seem to remember an incident a few years ago involving you, the local constabulary, and a very large fish."

"Horace." Duncan's tone was full of reproach, and he unsuccessfully hid a grin. "You know I was only there to post your bail. Now, getting back to the business at hand, this year, the Oxford team is in third position after the first round, an almost unprecedented placing for the University. And tonight, the Invariants don't have the comfort of heckling the event because Oxford is being represented by one of our own." Once again, he had to shout to be heard over the crows and whistles from the audience.

"So be warned. This year, you're all going down. Now, Mr. King and Mr. Stewart? If you would do the honors."

Jasper stepped forward and raised his hands for order.

"Hello everybody! I'm Jasper King, and my counterpart from the States with the unfortunate name is Randy Stewart, and we are shepherding tonight's proceedings. Just as in prior years, the questions tonight have been culled from a list of submissions from each competing school. The questions will be selected at random and scored by the computer. What the computer says goes. When your school is called, come up to the stage, shake hands, barring some cultural taboo, and come out swinging.

"The question and any necessary lexicon will appear on this center screen and on the screens spaced around the room."

Randy broke in. "If you want the questions sent directly to your PADD, send a request to the address on the central monitor."

"Yes, thank you Randy. Challengers will have a short time period to complete their answer. The challenger with the answer that is most correct moves on to the next round, and so on and so on, until only one remains. Are you ready?" The room erupted in cheers andbellows. "All right! Let's get MIT and Queensland up here!

-oOo-

"Well done, you!" When she returned to her team after her third victory, Nyota found herself engulfed in a tangle of pale limbs and candy floss hair. Sophie knocked the air from her lungs with the force of her embrace, and her grip around her ribs was so tight, Nyota struggled to take a full breath.

"Come one, Soph. You're strangling her," Naresh said as he tugged at Sophie's arms.

"Well, pardon me for my enthusiasm," Sophie huffed, letting her friend loose. "I don't think the team's ever made it to the final round on pub night, and I'm a bit beside myself."

"Well, I think we should hear from the hero of the hour," Pete said. "Miss Uhura, would you care to say a few words?"

"Here, here!" Sophie perched in her chair attentively. At the other end of the table, Charlie and Professor MacAllan were deep in conversation, and Nyota wondered if they'd even watched the round.

"I still have one more round to deal with. Isn't that a little premature?" Nyota looked back towards the stage where the screens were being reset for the match between Kyoto and Starfleet Academy that would decide her opponent for the final.

"Precisely why you should thank us all now." Sophie banged the flat of her hand against the table to emphasize her words. "This is a moment of triumph. If you put it off until after the final, there's a chance it'll be a concession. Speech now! And fast, before the next round starts."

She could have argued against Sophie's questionable logic but seeing how excited her friends were, she didn't want to. "Well, since you've asked so nicely." Sophie stuck out her tongue, and Nyota laughed. "First, I'd like to thank Pete, without whom I wouldn't be so familiar with Welsh and for trusting I'd be able to single out his voice when he started yelling out how to correct my mistakes."

Naresh slapped Pete on the shoulder as he ducked his head. His cheeks flamed when Sophie leaned over and kissed him squarely on the mouth.

"Second," Nyota continued, "My thanks to Naresh for introducing Pete to symbolic language. If he hadn't, our boy would never have been so obsessed with Wernicke's paradigm that he wouldn't have used it for all of his written communications over the last six months, and none of us would be able to read it on sight. Not needing the key to decipher that second round question, while not vital, certainly made things easier."

"Weren't you cursing my very existence over that just last week?"

"Oh, Naresh," Sophie sighed. "We tease because we love." She turned to Nyota, her expression confident and expectant. "Aren't you forgetting someone?"

"That's right. I've left out someone very important. Someone without whom this would all have been impossible." Nyota smiled. "I'd like to thank myself."

"Hey!"

"That was all me in that third round, and I was brilliant."

"Your humility never ceases to amaze," Sophie said archly.

"It's what you like best about me." Nyota sat next to her and leaned over and kissed her cheek. "You know I love you. Stop pouting."

"Are you lot done?" Charlie frowned, the rhythm of his glass tapping against the table was sharp and staccato. "You're all acting like she did something difficult."

"That's not fair," said Pete. He started to stand, but Nyota squeezed his arm.

"It's not worth it," she whispered, and he sank back into his chair and glared at Charlie.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay." Jasper's voice boomed out over the pub's sound system. "We need to learn where the reset button is on this thing. But we've resolved our technical difficulties and are ready to proceed. If Mr. Haru and Mr. Spock would please come to the stage, we can get about our business of finding Oxford an opponent for the final."

The room erupted in shouts and whistles, and the tall Vulcan make his way to the stage, his head high and back straight. He was nearly 30 centimeters taller than Kyoto's representative, and Nyota smiled at the unintentionally funny picture they made. There was a moment of awkwardness as they were introduced to one another, neither man's culture given to the shaking of hands. They settled on inclining their heads towards one another and turned to their individual work screens, styluses in hand.

"You will have 30 seconds to study the lexicon and 120 seconds to translate as many phrases as possible," Jasper instructed. "Randy, where does our question for this round come from?"

"This question comes from the University of Toronto, Jasper. The Sumerian language was spoken in southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium, BCE. The language was lost for centuries and rediscovered in Earth's 19th century. It is the earliest known of Earth's written languages. The following key is for the eme-sal dialect, used exclusively by female characters in some literary texts."

A cuneiform key appeared on the central screen, transliterated into Standard.

"Your 30 seconds to study begins now."

* * *

><p><em>AN:As always, I'm playing with someone else's toys for the fun of it and promise to return them in the same or better condition than when I absconded with them.<em>

_Thanks so much for the continued interest. I hope everyone's December is going well and that the new year is wonderful and holds many joys for you all, both expected and unexpected._


	5. Chapter 5

"And the question goes to Starfleet Academy!" The sounds of cheering mixed with cries of disappointment exploded through the pub. Spock blinked slowly as he adjusted to the increased noise level.

Mr. King stepped forward again. "There's going to be a 20-minute break before the final showdown between Starfleet Academy and Oxford University begins. Bar's still open, so pick your poison and pick your sides."

Spock exited the stage and returned to the table where his teammates were gathered. He was greeted with a round of applause.

"That was beautiful." Martin stood and slapped him on the back. Spock suppressed his creeping irritation and disregarded the urge to shrug his shoulders in order to dislodge his roommate's hand. Even after sharing quarters with him for the better part of four years, he had not impressed upon Martin his distaste for casual physical contact.

Martin glanced over at the Oxford team. "I don't think she's going to be that tough to take down," he said, focusing on the team's solo round competitor, the girl from the pub the night before.

"I'm not sure I agree with you, Cadet." Commander Denise Parker was the co-chair of the Starfleet Academy Linguistics Department and was the adviser for the Academy's linguistics club and team. Spock had first encountered the Commander in her Linguistic Technology class, and he had found her instruction to be sufficiently intriguing that he also participated in two of her advanced seminars even though the subject matter had been outside of his main areas of study. He found her to be a demanding instructor but generous with her time and expertise, and she had proven to be an invaluable mentor.

"No disrespect intended Commander, but her performance hasn't been _that_ impressive," Martin replied.

"And you base that on…"

"Observation, sir. She had help on the first question. And the second question involved a writing system based on algebraic equations. She's a mathematician. It's obvious she already knew the system, so she likely studied it. On the third question, her opponent completed more of the translation. The only reason she won that one was because he made mistakes."

"And your assessment, Mr. Spock?" He recognized Parker's query for what it was: a test of his judgment in evaluating a potential threat. He had watched the young woman from Oxford carefully that evening and did not need to consider his response.

"I do not agree with Mr. Schroeder."

"Explain."

"The Oxford competitor…"

"Uhura," Martin interjected.

Spock nodded. "Miss Uhura was able to identify her teammate's voice despite considerable auditory interference as a result of the traditional practice of spectator participation and obstruction. After two verbal repetitions of the provided lexicon, she had sufficient knowledge to correct two inaccuracies using only verbal cues which suggests exceptional aural acuity. Shall I continue?"

"Please."

"While Miss Uhura is more likely to be familiar with the form of Wernicke's paradigm for symbolic writing than one who studies only linguistics, her demonstrated mastery of the system is not standard, even for a mathematician, which suggests a broader linguistic background that her field of study suggests.

"The third question was decided based on accuracy. It is irrelevant that the competitor from Princeton translated a larger portion of the passage when he did not do so accurately. I believe the final round will be a challenge."

"I believe you are correct, Mr. Spock," Parker agreed.

Spock returned to his seat as Commander Parker explained to Martin the danger in underestimating an opponent, a concept in which he should have been well-versed as a first class command track cadet but a mistake Spock knew he continued to make. Cadets Solórzano and Gunheim had quietly removed to the bar, and Cadet Zhelen was engaged in conversation with some students from Harvard University at the next table.

Satisfied that he was not being observed, Spock allowed his attention to drift again towards the team from Oxford and the slender, dark-haired girl of obvious African heritage who had stumbled into him the night before. Uhura.

The establishment where the previous night's gathering had been held had perplexed him. The entry door, which still required manual operation, had multiple latches and knobs. While Spock was familiar with manual entries, it was not obvious which handle would successfully grant access to the tavern.

Martin had simply reached out and grasped a handle. The door opened easily, and he had looked at Spock and shrugged. "I can't really explain it. That one just made sense."

Spock's discomfiture had not ended at the door. Frames on the wall displayed pictures that had been cut into small interlocking pieces that were only partially reassembled; a track was suspended from the ceiling, and miniature representations of starships coursed across the room; none of the 37 timepieces scattered haphazardly throughout the room showed the same time; music blared from antiquated radio equipment affixed to the walls. He supposed that humans found this visual cacophony "whimsical." He did not.

Once inside, Gunheim and Solórzano had drifted towards the dartboards at the back of the pub, and Zhelen had joined acquaintances from another university at their table. Martin had pushed his way to the bar while Spock performed reconnaissance, searching for an empty table. That was when he first encountered the girl with the dark hair. Uhura. She was sitting with her teammates and laughing at a strange mix of one of the Brittonic languages and the gibberish poetry of Lewis Carroll recited by another of the table's occupants. Her long hair was loose, curling over her shoulders and brushing the upper swell of her breasts, and her subtle fragrance reminded him of white star flowers and soltar fruit.

He considered his involuntary hormonal and chemical reactions, an increased heart rate and a tightening in his chest that were, for him, hallmarks of sexual attraction. He dismissed them and continued his survey of the room. Martin had procured places at the bar, and as Spock approached, his roommate's attention was drawn to something behind his shoulder. When he commented on this, Martin disclosed a number of unpalatable details regarding his exploits with a human female he had met the prior year, Sophie Lansing. Spock had turned and followed the other man's gaze to the table he had observed earlier and the girl with the long, dark hair.

He had watched as she rose and made her way across the room and out of his line of sight. He did not see her again for 15 minutes and 25 seconds, and when she reappeared, he continued his observation. She stood at the end of the room, listening to something, seemingly entranced. Spock had not understood what she found so captivating. All he could hear was a dissonant tangle of voices and languages when he chose to acknowledge it.

She began to make her way back across the room, and Spock blocked out the clamor around him and forced his attention back to Martin. There was no purpose in his continued observation. Regardless of how physically attractive he found the young woman, he would only be in Oxford for five days, insufficient time to develop any type of familiarity or rapport. He gave her no further thought until she was thrown into him.

He had automatically gripped her arms to keep her from falling but realized his mistake as soon as he touched her skin. The voices he had been shutting out, the chaotic sound, became overwhelming, and he made his second mistake: He forced the noise away again, and brought himself to a place of silence.

As his mind began to calm, the girl panicked. His immediate concern been had that she had somehow been harmed. He had tightened his grip, wanting to reassure himself that she had not been injured, but he was momentarily distracted by her scent. His heartbeat quickened, and he swallowed as she first tried to pull away and then looked up at him.

Spock had asked the girl if she was unharmed. At first, she had struggled for words, but then she steadied herself and answered him. When she pulled away again, he let her go.

She was halfway across the room when it struck him that the girl had answered in him Vulcan, not Standard. And in the dialect of Ra'al province, specific to Vulcana Regar, the largest city on the planet. Common enough, but Terran instruction tended towards the dialect of his home of Shi-Khar, the planet's capital.

He watched her progress through the crowd, and although he knew it was coincidence, she stopped and looked back at him as if she could sense him watching her. He dismissed this as impossible but could not as easily rationalize how his sense of time had suspended when her eyes found his so that he was uncertain how long they had stared at one another.

He had thought to follow the girl, but Martin had clapped him on the shoulder, and jarred his vision. He looked for her again, but she had already gathered her possessions and was gone. This was when he realized that the voices around him no longer sounded like discordant noise. They were like…music.

Martin had taken the beer he had ostensibly ordered for Spock and led him over to the where the Oxford team was sitting, immediately drawing the pink-haired girl away from where she had been holding three human males in thrall. Spock surmised that this was Sophie Lansing.

He had participated in the table's conversation only minimally because the interplay of voices and languages around him was fascinating, and he found it difficult to divide his focus between the discussion and the vocal concerto filling his ears. He quickly became overwhelmed and had retired to the silence of the hotel room he shared with Martin and Zhelen. He had attempted to regain his self-mastery through meditation but had been unable to concentrate. Instead, he had fallen into a heavy and dreamless sleep.

-oOo-

Spock's application to Starfleet had been born out of a curiosity to better understand those parts of his nature that were influenced by his humanity, as much as an alternative should the Vulcan Science Academy reject him. He had not considered his sexuality to be one of those things until it had become clear that he and the Vulcan girl he had been betrothed and bonded to at the age of seven, T'Pring, were neither intellectually nor physically compatible.

Their bond had never been strong. As a child and adolescent, he had thought this was because he was somehow deficient, hampered in fortifying and maintaining the bond with T'Pring because of his human genetics. When she had suggested they become sexually intimate, Spock had suspected that was her attempt to strengthen their connection, and he had agreed, although at 16, he had never felt any physical interest in her.

Rather, his infrequent dreams, which he knew to be a part of his mother's heritage to him, had sometimes shown him other females: the human girl with the freckles and ready smile with whom he had spent time while visiting his mother's family on Earth; the attaché to the Betazoid ambassador with the graceful neck and raspy voice who had attended a reception his parents hosted in their home; a well-known ka'athyra player whose technique and eloquent hands he admired.

Their initial couplings had been indifferent and hurried with no attempts from either of them to prolong or personalize the act. Spock had hoped this would change with experience and familiarity. However, after only a few months, their joinings were marked only by a mutual desire to have it done, and they had agreed to end these explorations. After that, T'Pring became even more distant, closing herself off from him and effectively shuttering their mental bond, but not before Spock had become aware of another who was the focus of her thoughts, one who was of her choosing.

When he made the impulsive decision to decline his acceptance to the Vulcan Science Academy, Spock had released T'Pring of all obligation to him, telling her it was his hope that she find contentment without any duty owed to him.

Once at the Academy, Spock had realized how out of his depth he was when it came to human social interaction. He had spent time with his mother's family when his father's schedule for him had allowed, but these visits had been infrequent, sometimes only once every two or three years and with people who had known him his entire life and with whom he was in regular contact.

His first attempts to connect with human females were not successful. He had little experience in initiating casual conversation or participating in the exchange of banal pleasantries that made up a significant portion of human communication. He also experienced difficulty in interpreting the subtle intricacies of human behavior. He had incorrectly assumed that this would not a barrier as his mother was human, but then he had been approached by a fellow cadet requesting assistance with her mandatory programming requirement despite her more than adequate skill in that area.

He had been confused by her obvious dissemblance. His cousin Callie, who was also attending a university in the San Francisco Bay Area, had explained that the cadet was probably attracted to him but didn't know how to tell him. She had talked him through the first steps of human courtship.

While his relationship with the cadet had not advanced beyond a few uneventful dates, it had been a start, and Spock quickly learned that sexual intimacy without a connection on a mental level was as dissatisfying as his fumblings with T'Pring. Since then, he had avoided purely sexual encounters.

None of this changed the fact that he desired the girl with the long, dark hair and that there was insufficient time to establish anything but the most superficial of connections.

-oOo-

The morning after he first encountered Uhura, Spock had been himself again, and he allowed a brief moment of relief before stifling the emotion. It was in that moment of clarity that he became aware of a gnawing certainty that he had caused Uhura's distress the night before, and he was mortified at the liberty he had taken, however inadvertent.

While there might have been some justification for the intrusion into her mind given the suddenness and force of their encounter, his alteration of her thoughts was inexcusable. He had not experienced that kind of lapse since he was a child, and he spent several minutes trying to determine whether this had been because of the shock of finding the girl unexpectedly in his arms or because of his want of her.

Spock had considered whether he should approach Uhura before the first round to explain his infraction and offer his apologies, but after observing her with her team the next morning, she had not appeared to be suffering any ill effects from their brief contact. He had concluded that such a confession would cause the young woman far more distress than it would ease.

He chose to ignore the fleeting thought that his decision had been influenced by the way his fingers ached to feel her smooth skin again and the perceptible tightening in his groin as he had watched her cover her team's work screen in long lines of mathematical equations in a passable representation of his native tongue. In the end, Spock had remained silent, but he had sworn that he would maintain absolute control over his mind and emotions when he next encountered the girl with the dark hair. Which would be in 5 minutes and 14 seconds.

Looking over at Uhura, Spock again felt the involuntary reactions of his body that were becoming familiar in her presence and had only intensified with the discovery that she had a sharper intellect than he had first anticipated. He resolved to speak with her after the upcoming contest in order to gauge whether she might have any interest in him. He had not been physically drawn to a female this fervently in over two years, and the only logical course of action was to pursue her, so long as she was amenable. With this decided, his focus sharpened, and his shoulders straightened. Yes, he thought, this felt right.

* * *

><p><em>AN: I do not own Star Trek. If I did, I wouldn't give my husband so much crap about not being a trust fund baby. I blame him.<em>

_I know. Yet another chapter where they don't interact. I swear that all ends here, so thank you to everyone who's stuck with this for this long without it._

_And just for a minute, let's talk about sex. I have never been a subscriber to the idea that Spock is some sort of innocent flower who's kept himself chaste and pure until his true love comes along. (I don't think this for Nyota either.) Or that he's clueless about sex or personal relationships. One of the things Nyota says in the ongoing comic series is that he ran away to Earth because he felt the pull of his humanity, so it only makes sense to me that one of the things he did was explore that side of himself (his humanity) with varying degrees of success. _

_Based on what's been seen in the series and the films that came before the reboot, it's reasonable that the Vulcan cultural embarrassment regarding Pon Farr is the loss of emotional control associated with it and not the sex. Rather, I think Vulcans approach sex in a straightforward manner. Sex begets children. Children are vital to the enrichment and advancement of the species. Therefore, sex is an important part of life and society, and it's not logical to pretend it doesn't exist or to be embarrassed by it. I mean, you don't end up with a population of 6 billion procreating only when biology tells you that you have to. Which isn't to say that it's something paraded about or not treated privately._

_This view has largely informed my characterization of Spock in that regard. Given that humans are unlikely to become any less interested in sex, it would be something that he would investigate because we, as a species, place so much importance on it. And it wouldn't take long for him to realize that mindless screwing around just isn't his thing. His dilemma then becomes what to do when he is unable to simply suppress his attraction to a human girl whom he has just met. In the comic, Nyota also says at one point that he'll twist logic to the point that he can justify doing the illogical. _


	6. Chapter 6

All right, people! One more round and it's all done!" Jasper paced back and forth along front of the stage, clearly ready for his role in the challenge to be over. "Let's get Oxford and Starfleet up here because I can't drink until one of these two comes out on top." The cheer that circled the room was, if anything, even more unruly than before the break, now that glasses had been refilled and bladders emptied.

A tall figure in red caught Nyota's attention. The Vulcan cadet, Spock, made his way towards the stage. Sophie leaned over and whispered in her ear. "You'd better get up there before Jasper starts whinging."

Nyota shook her head. "Don't let him fool you. He loves the attention."

"Excuse me, Miss Uhura?" While Nyota was preoccupied, Jasper had spotted her in the crowd. "Are you waiting for a personalized invitation? Get up your lovely ass up here!"

The shouts of approval from around the room faded to little more than whispers when Spock's eyes met hers, and she forgot to breathe.

"Go on," Sophie hissed in her ear. "Just think of it as foreplay."

Nyota glared at the girl next to her before she rose from her chair and climbed up onto the stage.

"Now that we're all present and accounted for, let's get on with it. For Oxford, Miss Uhura." Jasper nodded at Nyota. "And representing Starfleet Academy, Mr. Spock."

She looked over at her opponent and found the Vulcan studying her. She had noticed that Spock had pointedly ignored the hand his first opponent offered him, so she was surprised when he closed the distance between them in two long strides and held out his hand to her. For a split second, she considered that it might be a ploy to unnerve her, but she reached out and firmly grasped his hand.

His skin was smooth and dry, and his fingertips were unexpectedly calloused, not a trait Nyota had thought to encounter in an intellectual. He was warmer than she remembered from the night before. Too warm for a supposedly cold-blooded species. If he had been human, he would have been dangerously feverish. His grip tightened, almost imperceptibly, and for a brief moment, he leaned slightly towards her.

Spock was at least 15 cm taller than her, and Nyota resisted the urge to rise up on her toes to give herself just a little more height. She tipped her head back, not breaking eye contact. If he thought he was going to intimidate her with an imposing physical presence and an impassive manner, she would have to correct that impression. Immediately. And just as quickly as he had crossed to her, Spock released her hand and returned to his work screen on the other side of the stage, leaving Nyota a little unsure of what had just happened.

"Are you both ready?" Jasper asked.

"Yes." Spock's attention was focused on the work screen in front of him.

Nyota picked up a stylus and turned to her own screen. "I'm good."

"As some of you may already know, the final round is a bit different than the ones earlier." Jasper moved to stand in front of the main display screen at the center of the stage. "Those were sudden death, but crowning a winner calls for something a bit more lingering. We have five questions. The first to get three right takes the whole thing." He stepped to the side so that the central display was fully visible. "Randy, who's responsible for our first question?"

"This question comes from Lancaster University, Jasper." Randy was studying his PADD. "Here's a fun fact. Lancaster reports that the fastest time they've recorded for this question is 8 minutes, 23 seconds. There will be no time for studying the provided lexicon because the object of this question is to create the lexicon. The following list is comprised of numbers in the Beta Promethean language. They are in what would be the equivalent of alphabetical order."

A series of symbols appeared on the main screen.

"The second list is comprised of their corresponding numbers in Federation Standard in ascending order." A lengthy series of numbers appeared. "Your task is to figure out which is which. And if you complete the exercise with time left, you can take a crack at solving for x in the sample equation. You have two minutes starting now."

Nyota brought the problem set up on the screen in front of her and took a few seconds to study the symbols and numbers that made up the question, searching for patterns. She was still aware of the noise in the room around her, but the part of her brain that processed language sharpened and narrowed in on the puzzle presented.

Two numbers in the 50s; three ending in 5; four between 100 and 200; and so on, until she had mentally categorized each number. She then searched out the same configurations in the Beta Promethean set and started writing, crossing off numbers and symbols as she cleared them.

She was nearly halfway through the list when Jasper called time, jarring her back into the center of the light and noise of the crowded pub. She tapped the submit command on her screen and waited for the computer to score the answers. She looked over at Spock. The Vulcan was motionless, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression neutral.

Jasper stepped forward and raised his hand for order, but the crowd only quieted marginally. "The computer has completed the scoring. First blood has been drawn, and I am sorry to say that the first question goes to…Starfleet Academy, but only by a slender margin."

As the audience reacted, Nyota looked for her teammates. Sophie was making encouraging gestures, but her eyes went straight to Charlie. He was sitting back in his chair with his arms folded over his chest, his face like a stone, and his eyes almost dead as he stared at her. She spun back to her work screen. She could feel her cheeks burning, and she wiped her suddenly damp palms on the legs of her jeans.

The second question was a standard cypher using a numeric sequencing key, and when Spock took that question as well, Nyota closed her eyes and made herself take slow, deep breaths to quell the panic rising in her chest. She kept her focus on her work screen, not wanting to deal with Charlie's rancor.

"Nyota, are you okay?" Jasper whispered as he waited for the audience to quiet enough for Randy to announce the third question.

She looked over at him and managed a tight smile. "I'm fine."

Jasper didn't look convinced. "Well, pull it together. It's okay if you lose, but you can't just give up." He turned to Randy asked him to read the next question.

"This problem is presented by McGill University, and it's a doozy," Randy boomed. "This is a magic square. The square is seven by seven. The language is Federation Standard English. Obviously, there is no key. In order to _luck_ your way into this one, you'll need to look over a four-leafed clover that you've overlooked before. The center square is a "t." There are two minutes for this question. Your time starts…now."

Nyota took a deep breath and formatted a checkerboard square on her screen, seven squares high and seven wide. And she stopped cold. The trick to a magic square was the clue. Sometimes it was straightforward, but in this case, figuring out the clue was part of the puzzle. She knew she was looking for seven 7-letter words around a central theme. The clue specified the number four, making it likely that the fourth letter of each word would spell out the fourth word in the sequence, the center word in both directions of the grid. The trick was finding where to start. She repeated the clue in her head. "To luck into this one, you'll need to look over a four-leafed clover…" Luck. Clover. Seven. And then she got it. Seven 7-letter words about luck, one with "t" as the fourth letter. Fortune.

She filled the word into the center of the grid. A muffled rumble of approval dimly registered at the back of her brain. She scribbled "rainbow" into the sixth slot and "fateful" into the seventh. "Triumph" went into the fifth position, and after a few seconds' thought, "favored" filled in the second slot and "charmed" next to it in the third position. She was pondering the last word when time ran out.

"Put up your styluses and submit your answers please," Jasper instructed. When her screen wiped clean, Nyota closed her eyes and waited for the verdict. Her fingers itched to work numbers on the now blank surface in front of her, she squeezed her stylus to keep her hand still. She knew she only waited a minute or two at the most, but time seemed to move through honey.

Jasper's PADD chimed, and his voice carried across the pub. "Ladies and gentlemen, the computer has spoken. Point to Oxford."

Nyota couldn't stop the grin that spread over her face. She drew a breath and exhaled away some of her nervous tension. Her competitive streak was not pretty, and she didn't need it making her careless. She breathed deeply again in an effort to further steady herself when Jasper stepped forward to announce the next question. "Looks like we finally have an audio question. Randy, if you would be so kind."

Randy brought out two sound-dampening headsets and gave one to Spock and brought the other to her. "Our two competitors will be listening to the audio over headsets that block out the ambient noise, so this is the one question where there really can't be any help from the audience," he explained. "Unless, of course, you've brought an image projector with you. We'll also play the audio over the speakers for those of you playing along at home.

"This question comes to us from MIT. Moram is an ancient language spoken by the Lindar colony of Lam." Nyota's brow furrowed as Randy warbled. His tone rose and fell sharply as he spoke. "It is a tonal language," he continued. "In other words, the pitch of the voice when speaking affects the meaning. The language shares this feature with the Niger-Congo family of languages here on Earth, excepting, of course, most dialects of Swahili."

Nyota smiled. Kiswahili was a lingua franca in the region of southeastern Kenya she was from, along with Federation Standard, but she had also grown up hearing and speaking Kikamba. Kikamba was a tonal language.

"The lexicon is in Standard phonetic notation with Standard translation," instructed Randy. "There is also musical notation to indicate change in pitch. You will have 30 seconds to review the materials. The audio is one minute, and will begin immediately following the 30-second study period. Once the audio has played completely through, you will have two minutes to translate as much of the sample into Standard as possible. The quality of the audio is questionable, so you might want to clean it up a bit. Your time for study starts now."

Nyota turned her attention to the center screen and pulled her headset on. The key was similar to a piece of sheet music. Twelve lines of Standard musical notation appeared above the line of phonetic notation and its Standard translations. As she mentally sounded out the phonetic symbols, she wondered if the audio would sound familiar or if it would be something entirely new.

Without warning, a male voice sounded in her ears. His tones were soft and sliding, and she was relieved to hear familiar tonality, not the same as Kikamba, but not wholly foreign. While she had some difficulty fully appreciating the audio because of poor recording quality, ambient noise, and static, she heard enough to give her some important clues. There wasn't a single sound she couldn't reproduce, telling her that the language was likely wholly consistent with the human vocal apparatus.

When the audio track ended, Nyota pulled up the headset controls on her screen and attempted filter out some of the interference in the recording and boost the frequency of the vocal track. As she started the playback again, she reviewed the musical notation for the tonal patterns she was hearing, and worked her way through an initial translation of the recording. There were several parts of the audio where she had to make some assumptions because of poor sound quality and she was nearly halfway through with the translation when time was called.

Nyota removed the headset and stepped back from the screen to examine her work. It was rough, but with only two minutes to both clean the recording and translate a language she'd never heard before whose meaning changed depending on the pitch of the speaker's voice, she was satisfied. She hit the submit command, and her screen cleared. Nyota wished she'd been able to spend more time with the recording. The portions that had been clear had been musical and comforting, and the subject of the recording had the general form and content of an epic poem, although the language itself could have been given to verse the way the spoken words tended towards music.

The announcement of the results came more quickly than she expected. "Oxford has tied things up with a masterful showing on the audio question. After Starfleet's early lead, it looks like we've got a horserace."

"Cymru am byth!"

The high-pitched cry rose above the noise of the audience, and Nyota looked over her shoulder and laughed. Pete was standing on his chair, pumping his fist, and Sophie was tugging on his other arm, trying to get him to sit down.

"Calm down, Davies. This isn't football," Jasper sighed. "We're moving on to the fifth and final question. This will decide it all. Unless it's a tie, in which case, we'll be here all night."

"Get on with it!" someone yelled, and the crowd whooped and jeered. Randy stepped forward when the noise faded again.

"This final question is pretty straightforward exercise in conjugation and declension. Or is it? Shesto, the primary language of the Tezwan civilization, has 146 inflectional categories."

Nyota stole a quick glance at the other side of the stage, only half listening to the rest of the question. Spock was motionless, still in a way she'd never seen in a human. He stared at the screen in front of him, and her throat constricted when she thought about being the object of that kind of unwavering focus.

And then he blinked and slowly turned his head in her direction. It was as if he knew what she was thinking. His expression didn't change, but she could feel the weight of his gaze drag down her body. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and she felt a little lightheaded as she struggled to breathe against the tightness in her throat.

Randy droned on at the edge of her awareness, and she dropped her eyes and forced herself to pay attention to the end of the question. The screen in front of her lit up.

The puzzle was simple enough; complete each passage as it was presented, but you wouldn't get the next passage until you had finished the one on the screen. The problem was that the lexicon contained conflicting information regarding noun and verb inflection, and while the passages started out simple, the subsequent ones built on the ones before and became more and more complex. With such a short time, it was mainly guesswork. Nyota began to work, and it felt like she had just started when Jasper called for them to submit their answers.

A sense of absolute calm settled around her when the computer registered her submission. She'd done her best. It was either enough or it wasn't. Regardless, there was still the opportunity to do better tomorrow, when it really counted and when she didn't have to do it in a spotlight.

Jasper's PADD chimed. "Looks like the results are in. Will it be Oxford?" The crowd erupted in both cheers and derision, and Nyota giggled. Jasper paused, and when the crowd settled down, he continued. "Or Starfleet?" The spectators roared again, this time louder and stronger in support of the Vulcan cadet.

Jasper looked at his PADD and was quiet for an endless minute. She didn't know whether he didn't like what he saw or if he was just being dramatic. His eyes flicked over to her, just for a second, and she knew.

"Congratulations Starfleet. The night is yours." The audience exploded, and Nyota looked over at Spock. He was stock still, immobile, unmoving, and while his expression was as impassive as ever, he somehow seemed perplexed at the unrestrained cheering.

"The bar is open for two more hours, so don't go scampering off," Jasper told the remaining crowd. "Randy and I want to party with every single one of you. Somebody bring me a beer!"

"I'll grab that for you," Randy offered and jumped off the stage.

"That was easy," Jasper said, turning to Nyota and slinging his arm around her shoulders. "Now, what do you say you ditch those rule-bleeders and we can go back to my room and test the spring potential of my mattress."

"Wow, Jasper. That's so…tempting." Nyota twisted and tried to extricate herself without seeming like she was trying to run away. He was mostly decent and didn't deserve that, although the cheap Charlie Spencer impression he'd taken to doing around her was a little aggravating. "I'm a little tired – "

"I know." Jasper tightened his grip and pulled her a little closer. "You did so well tonight, and that has to be overwhelming. And now…me. Come on, we've been differentiating for far too long."

"Miss Uhura." During her struggle to deflect Jasper, Spock had approached and now stood patiently, his hands clasped behind his back. "May I speak with you?"

The distraction was enough for Nyota to squirm out of Jasper's grasp. "Of course." She followed Spock with slow, deliberate steps. It gave her a few second to calm the tremulous flutter that had settled behind her breastbone. "Thank you. Jasper's a good guy, but…well." She trailed off, uncertain what to say.

"Mr. King's attentions appeared to be causing you distress."

"Annoyance, mostly. But I appreciate the rescue."

"A fortunate coincidence. However, my primary purpose in interrupting was to speak with you."

"Oh?" She took a tentative step closer to him and smiled.

"Affirmative." Spock leaned towards her, and the rigid lines of his back and shoulders softened, despite his unyieldingly upright posture. "I wished to express my appreciation. Our contest was most satisfactory."

Her smile faltered. "Oh." She wasn't sure what she had expected him to say. Vulcans were hardly effusive, and satisfactory was…fine. "Thanks. It was a good match. Congratulations."

He started to reply but hesitated when his attention was drawn to where his team was sitting. Martin was waving and beckoning to him.

"I guess your team is waiting for you." The flutter in her chest twisted into a hard knot when she thought he might walk away, and her mind scrabbled for something to say that didn't strike her as pointless. "Unless…

"Yes?" He didn't walk away. Instead, he turned back to her. His eyes narrowed, and the way they crinkled at the corners softened his features. He had really nice eyes. And a really nice mouth, especially the way his lips almost pouted when he talked. And now he was staring at her, waiting for her to say something.

"I'm sorry. What?"

"I asked if you would please elaborate," he repeated, his expression somehow bemused, even though it hadn't changed.

"Oh."

"You say that with some frequency."

"I do not."

"You have uttered that particular interjection three times in the last two minutes and 43 seconds."

"Oh." Nyota couldn't help but laugh at herself when she heard the word come out of her mouth again. It seemed that proximity to the Vulcan cadet melted her brain a little, which only made her giggle harder.

Spock's mild expression slowly dissolved. The small space between his brows creased, forming a nearly perfect "V." "I do not understand."

"I'm sorry," she stuttered, immediately sobering.

"There is no offense." Despite his reassurance, he sounded vaguely unsatisfied. "I find certain facets of Terran humor elusive."

"I was laughing at myself more than anything being actually funny."

"Ah."

"I was going to ask if you had time to go over your answer to that last question with me? I'd like to see how wrong I was."

Spock studied her for a moment and then nodded in acceptance. "My team does not require my presence. I was also curious as to your responses to the third and fourth questions. Perhaps we could review those as well?"

"Okay." She could feel the smile creeping back across her face. "I'll see if I can get Jasper to pull up the answers."

"Mr. King and Mr. Stewart provided the access codes for the internal network when they requested my assistance in calibrating their equipment." Spock reached inside his jacket and withdrew a small PADD. "If you have no objections?"

Nyota shook her head. Spock entered the requisite passcode into his PADD and brought up a split screen displaying both their responses to the first question. He angled the screen towards her, and Nyota moved closer to him to better review the results. She was overly aware of the proximity of their hands as they both looked over the small device Spock held. She held herself stiffly to avoid any inadvertent physical contact, and his posture was just as rigid.

It became immediately apparent when reviewing the first question that they were well matched. Differences in their work were minimal. The main reason Spock had won this question was that he had translated more than she had. Nyota chewed at the inside of her lip while she studied his work. She'd hoped that time wasn't going to be an issue when she was on her own, but she hadn't expected Spock, either.

They spoke quietly, questioning one other about the choices they had made in approaching the problem and explaining their thought processes. She forgot herself in the work, and her stance relaxed, and she didn't notice how Spock's posture softened, his attention as much on her as on the PADD they worked from.

-oOo-

Martin suspected he'd overreacted when the gomer playing emcee announced, finally, that Starfleet Academy had won the pub quiz. He'd pounded the table and jumped to his feet, whooping loudly in his excitement and relief. Not that he was the only one. Gunheim had risen with a scream of delight while Solórzano had visibly relaxes. Even Commander Parker had slammed her palm against the table in satisfaction.

He felt completely justified. He'd worked too long and too hard and had put up with too many undeserved second or third or even fourth place rankings to not have everything go 100% as planned.

Winning this thing for Starfleet might be the last chance he'd get to distinguish himself before assignments started to roll out in advance of graduation and commissioning in June. Spock, of course, already had his assignment, serving as science officer on the USS Yorktown under Christopher Pike. It was a cherry posting; senior staff to boot. And under Pike, who'd single-handedly preserved a tenuous peace between the Federation and the people of the Vestios system when he forcibly relieved his commanding officer for instigating an unprovoked attack on a Vestian military vessel. Serving under Pike could launch a career.

Not that the Vulcan hadn't earned it. Academically, he was the top of their class. He'd excelled in sims, training exercises, and war games. And he was the fleet's first Vulcan. He probably could have gotten his own ship if he'd asked for it.

Not that Martin was a slouch academically, but being in the top 15% of the class didn't get you much notice. Not without something else, and his resume was sorely lacking in that something else, though not for lack of effort. He needed this win to boost his chances for a prime first posting. He'd been planning the team's strategy for nearly a year, and it had to be perfect.

The admittedly decent free beer had helped when Spock lost the third and fourth questions to Oxford. And if his victory wasn't the definitive statement of the team's superiority it could have been, it was still a win and a warning that Starfleet wasn't there to screw around that year. Still, he had to make sure Spock's uncharacteristic stumble was just a fluke and not something, well, else.

Martin gulped the last of his beer and moved away from the table, where his team fielded congratulations and good-natured ribbing, to a spot where he could better scan the room for Spock, who had yet to return to his team.

When he saw his roommate was still on the stage speaking with Uhura, Martin sighed. It figured Sophie's bitchy little friend would corner him. Based on their encounter at Sophie's that morning, Martin wouldn't be surprised if she was ranting to Spock about his having some sort of unfair advantage because he was Vulcan. Martin started towards the stage, a sort of one-man rescue party.

When he was certain Spock could see him, he waved, drawing both his and Uhura's attention. He signaled for Spock to rejoin the team and the party that was growing around their table, but the Vulcan pointedly turned his back and continued his conversation with the Oxford girl. Her expression shifted from flustered giggles to thoughtfulness and finally turned into a brilliant smile. Spock drew his PADD out from inside his coat, and the two bent their heads over the device, Uhura studying the screen intently, and Spock focused on her.

Martin groaned. This was not happening. He retreated to the bar to regroup, have another pint, and try get a handle on what was going on up on the stage.

He hadn't been concerned when Spock had excused himself from the pub the night before. His roommate frequently handled "necessary social interactions" that way, arriving when the function was already in full swing, pretending to have a drink or maybe two if the conversation interested him, and leaving quietly after ensuring that his presence and participation had been observed. That was something he'd struggled with his first year at the Academy, and Martin liked to think he'd helped him understand the "illogical" human need for interpersonal connection, even in professional situations.

During the prep period that morning, he'd noticed Spock watching the Oxford work area but assumed his attention had been drawn there by the handwritten Vulcan script Uhura used to test the work screens. Again, Spock's actions hadn't been unusual. It was uncommon enough to see a non-Vulcan using any of the written forms of the language that it was likely to attract his attention, however briefly.

But then there'd been the way the Vulcan countered him when debating Uhura with Parker. And when the round began, Spock not only offered his hand to the girl but stood really close to her, well inside her personal space. He'd also pulled himself up to his full height, forcing Uhura, who was in no way short, to crane her neck back to look at him.

How could he have missed it? Spock once said he was only average height for a Vulcan male, and Martin had seen first-hand his roommate's unconscious tendency to maximize his stature around certain girls. Martin had teased him about it when he'd finally figured it out. Spock, of course, had refused to discuss the matter. That was how he knew he'd hit a nerve.

It was clear from her reaction that Uhura had interpreted both the physical contact and Spock's looming presence as intimidating, given the way she'd bristled before shaking his hand. Probably not the reaction Spock had intended. It would have been funny if he wasn't starting to suspected that Spock was off his game because of a girl.

As far as Martin knew, his roommate hadn't gotten any since ending a short-lived relationship with a nursing student a year ago. Not that Spock had told him anything, but the scuttlebutt on campus was that the girl, Christine, had been planning their wedding and naming their kids. And if that's what happened, Martin didn't blame Spock for turning tail, especially after the string of messages she'd left at their room after the breakup. It was enough to make any man gun shy, let alone his roommate who always seemed at a loss over the finer points of human emotional reaction.

Maybe that's what it all came down to. Maybe Spock just needed to get laid, and he'd fixated, intentionally or not, on someone as unlike his ex as possible, at least physically. If that's all it was, he might be able to help with that.

Martin finished his drink and looked around for Sophie. Her pink hair was like a beacon, even in the dim light of the pub, and he homed in on her position near the front of the room. Martin grinned as Sophie seemed to glow a little bit more when he slid up next to her.

"Hey, beautiful." Martin pressed a quick kiss to Sophie's cheek.

"Hey yourself, gorgeous. Good result, right? For both of us?"

"Great result." Sitting on the end of Oxford's table, he had an unimpeded view of Spock and Uhura where they were still bent over the PADD. Uhura pointed at something on the small screen and shook her head. Spock's expression was unusually animated. She hadn't finished speaking before he broke in. The uncharacteristic show of…what? Excitement? Annoyance? Enthusiasm? It was subdued, but it was there. The girl definitely got to him, that was for sure. And there was only one thing to do about that. Anything for the Fleet.

Martin nodded towards the stage. "So, what's up with your girl?"

Sophie followed his gaze and made no effort to hide her grin. "I suspect she's pumping your boy for information."

"Think she'd be up to pumping him for anything else?"

"Cheeky." Sophie hit him on the arm.

"Sorry."

"No, I love a dirty mouth," she said, her tone straightforward. "Is that the only reason you came over? To see if I'd pimp out my flatmate? Because I fail to see how I stand to benefit from that arrangement." The look she gave him was appraising and calculating. Martin could practically hear the gears grinding away inside her head, and he grew more and more uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

"I just thought we could help each other out," he said, scrambling for more solid ground. "You told me this morning she could use a good lay. And Spock's performance tonight was subpar. No offense to your friend, but he shouldn't have lost a single question."

"Oh, there's even more incentive. Set my best friend up with someone with subpar performance to help your team do better."

"So, I take it that's a no."

Sophie sighed and turned back to the stage. "It should be a no. Hell, it _would_ be a no, if she wasn't already moist for him."

"That mouth," Martin said with a faint smile, and he leaned in to kiss her.

"I know." Sophie's voice was soft against his lips. "It's a turn on, isn't it? Such a burden."

"Are we still on for dinner tomorrow?"

"And other activities."

"I was thinking we could meet for drinks first. You bring your roomie. I'll bring mine, and we let nature take its course."

"I'm not sure nature's going to be enough." Sophie gestured to the stage where Spock and Uhura now stood facing one another, and based on her expression and abrupt hand motions, appeared to be engaged in some sort of conflict. Not that Spock would get worked up, but Martin could see they were in disagreement about something.

"That's exactly why we're going to be there instead of just locking them up together in a storeroom."

"Uh oh." Sophie stood up straighter. Uhura had taken Spock's PADD and was entering something on the screen. Martin could almost hear the force of her fingers against the screen. She thrust the PADD back at the Vulcan, lifted her chin indignantly, and stalked away, heading straight for Sophie with a full head of steam. Spock stared after her, his head listing to one side the way it did when he found human behavior particularly baffling. Those two couldn't be left to their own devices. They wouldn't know what to do with each other. Maybe he should prep some flow charts just in case.

When Uhura reached the table, she stopped and spun on Martin. "No offense, but your friend is unreasonable. And pigheaded. And he doesn't want to hear anything he doesn't already think.

"Yeah, well, he _is_ Vulcan." Martin shrugged and turned to Sophie. "So, I'll see you tomorrow night, if not sooner."

"I'll comm you when and where."

"Good match, Uhura," Martin called back over his shoulder. He reached his team's table at the same time as Spock who was engrossed in something on his PADD.

"Here's our champ!" Martin slapped Spock on the shoulder. The Vulcan tensed up at the unexpected contact, and Martin marveled that after living on Earth and around humans for nearly four years, he still wasn't used to casual physical contact. He craned his neck to see what was on the screen. "What's so…fascinating?"

Spock looked at him, impassive. "Nothing of your concern," he said, his voice toneless, and slid his PADD back into his jacket pocket. He turned to Commander Parker, who had just said goodbye to the Oxford professor from the math department who had welcomed everyone at the beginning of the evening. "Commander, if you have no objections, I wish to return to the hotel."

"Dismissed, cadet," Parker told him. "And good job tonight."

Spock nodded and left without further good-byes. Martin sat down with the rest of his team and watched him make his way across the pub and out the door, his back ramrod straight and his movements stiff and spare. Oh, yeah. The guy had it bad.

* * *

><p><em>AN: As usual, I don't own Star Trek (unless a DVD or two counts). I might gets lots out of doing this, but money? No.<em>

_I want to thank everybody for hanging in there for the six chapters it's taken to get these two to actually talk to one another. And then immediately argue. You'll find out about what in the next chapter. And find out what message Nyota left on Spock's PADD._

_Also, thanks again to my beta, CB, who may or may not be reading this because he read the first draft. And the second. And the third. He might be over this chapter._

_And I don't know why I feel that I have to explain when I'm just making stuff up, but I do. I know only the bare minimum about linguistics study. Like that it exists. And stuff. So to anyone who really knows their stuff,sorry for the mistakes. One of these days, I'll write about something I actually know stuff about and won't have to feel like I have to go into a detailed explanation of what I don't know. _


	7. Chapter 7

Spock stood in the middle of the Starfleet Academy work space on the second day of the Invitational, methodically reviewing his answer to the sixth and final question of the official solo round, a difficult translation based on an audio sample of Sho'jt Sampi, an extinct language from the Uransu system, that was the basis for half the questions that day.

However, key that provided both the phonetic guide for the audio and the examples and translations of the written form of the language had been limited in scope, and it was necessary to draw conclusions based on what little information had been given. This was further complicated by what Spock suspected were deliberate ambiguities regarding the grammatical categories affecting declension and conjugation, including verbal and non-verbal agreement.

He appreciated the irony that the same issue had caused Uhura difficulty with the final question during the informal pub challenge the night before. When they had compared their answers to that question, there had only been one difference, a simple point of grammar that was logically subject to two interpretations. His approach had been correct, and hers had not. Although her reasoning had been sound, in the end, she had misinterpreted one of the more subtle cues within the passage itself. But Uhura had refused to accept that his was the more logical approach.

The human female had become increasingly agitated in the face of his calm and rational explanation until she had forcefully taken his PADD, made an entry on the screen, and shoved it back into his hands. She had then stalked off the stage to where her female teammate was in intimate conversation with Cadet Schroeder.

Only when Uhura had reached them had Spock been able to turn his attention away from her to what she had written on his PADD. Based on her reaction, he had expected some form of critical tirade, but her message had both surprised and elated him, much to his dissatisfaction. He had needed several deep, centering breaths before trusting his emotional control enough to read the note. Uhura had given him her comm code with instructions to contact her if he was "willing to have an open-minded discussion" about the next day's round, and she had signed her message with her given name, Nyota.

For the second night in a row, he had been unable to quiet his mind sufficiently for meditation. Sleep had eluded him as well as he had not been able to focus on anything other than repeatedly attempting to parse her meaning.

Today, despite his lack of sleep, Spock was again confident that he had worked through each ambiguity in the translation and had reconciled them not only with the provided key but with his work on the prior questions in the set, ensuring his answer was internally consistent, one of the expectations for this series of questions. While there were still three places where the correct verbal agreement was subject to multiple equally logical interpretations, he felt certain he had considered each variable and was satisfied with his response. He uploaded his submission to the server which immediately powered down his work screen and lowered the perimeter barrier.

As the opaque, soundproof field retracted into the floor, the silence of the shielded work area was replaced by the low-level hum of the spectators, equipment, and the officials circulating throughout the room. He looked over at the Oxford work area. He had hoped, although it was not logical to expect, that Nyota would finish before he was released, but the barrier around her team's space remained in place. Spock determined to contact her as soon as he had access to his personal comm and arrange a meeting, perhaps over the evening meal, if she was amenable.

Martin, who was holding his personal effects, was pacing back and forth along the edge of the competition floor, his eyes trained on Spock as he waited for the proctor to verify his submission codes, check his equipment and then excuse him. When Spock was released, he exited the work area, and Martin fell into step beside him, easily keeping pace despite Spock's long strides.

"How was the round?"

"Were the questions not displayed on the main screen?"

"They were."

"Then as you are knowledgeable as to the content of the problems posed and are familiar with my capabilities, I presume you are requesting my assessment of my performance, given that you already possess sufficient information to answer your own query."

Martin stared at him for an extended length of time and then handed him his comm and PADD. "I'm meeting Sophie and her roommate for drinks tonight. You're going, no arguments."

"I require further explanation."

"I have it on good authority that if you play your cards right, you could be very lucky tonight."

Spock puzzled over Martin's statement, working to break down the idiom. Phrases that depended on culturally agreed upon but unstated meaning continued to elude him despite his human mother and even after living and working with humans in close quarters for several years. He stopped when he deduced Martin's meaning. "You are referring to sexual relations."

"Bingo."

Not bothering to request clarification of how a game of chance related to their conversation, Spock resumed his retreat. He changed course in an attempt to separate himself from Martin so that he could contact Nyota, but the other cadet continued to follow him. Martin's tendency to interfere in his private concerns was one of their primary areas of friction despite repeated requests to the contrary. "Martin," he began when he was certain his tone would not betray the too-familiar irritation that threatened to upset his emotional balance, "you have made your arguments regarding the advantages of casual sexual activity on numerous occasions and with considerable conviction. However, I agree with neither your premise nor your conclusions in this matter."

He exited the hall through a rear door into the cool, overcast afternoon. Martin trailed him down the street leading back to their hotel but remained silent, so Spock continued.

"You have also failed to consider whether I am available. It is my intention to seek other company this evening."

"I'm pretty sure ponytail already has plans tonight."

Spock stopped again and turned Martin's statement over in his mind. It had been late when Nyota had left him on the stage the night before. Given her message, it was unlikely that she would have made other arrangements before allowing him a reasonable amount of time to respond, particularly since she had been on the competition floor for the majority of the morning and had still been there when he had been released.

"Explain."

Martin grinned in the manner Spock associated with his being pleased with himself. "Who do you think Sophie's roommate is? I met her at the apartment yesterday."

He considered the improbability of Martin having anticipated his intent, and when he did not respond, the other cadet resumed his attempts to persuade him.

"I watched you with her last night. The handshake. Leaning over her. Getting close to her by working from the same PADD? Is any of this ringing a bell? There were plenty of clues, and I know what to look for. Anyway, girls like that aren't available forever, so I decided to do you a favor by taking the matter out of your hands. Now, are you in?"

Spock thought about the possible alternatives to Martin's plan. He could refuse to attend, but then Nyota might interpret that as disinterest. He could contact her himself and suggest other arrangements, which had been his intention, but what if she had meant her invitation to only extend to the discussion of the competition and was not an expression of personal interest? Perhaps his teammate's precipitous act in arranging a group "date" was preferable to a more private meeting. The presence of other humans, Nyota's roommate in particular, would also allow him to engage her as was most natural and give him the opportunity to determine her intent towards him. Both of these were favorable factors given the brief duration of their acquaintance. He could then decide whether to make his own interest clear. Although it had not been his plan, the evening orchestrated by Martin appeared to have several desirable advantages.

"Affirmative," he answered and turned and again began to walk back to the hotel.

"You're welcome," Martin called after him, but he paid little attention as he mentally structured his afternoon to better prepare for the evening's activities. He had researched running routes before arriving in Oxford and one in particular promised to provide a suitable challenge. Attending to his physical conditioning was warranted, as were several hours of meditation to center himself and reinforce his emotional controls. And if time allowed, there were substantial sections of code in the training simulation program he was rewriting that required attention. As he approached the hotel, Spock was satisfied that his afternoon would be productive.

-oOo-

When the barrier dropped around the Oxford work area, Nyota was surprised she'd used nearly all of the allotted time to complete the round. She'd been inside the questions so deeply, she hadn't really noticed the passage of time. That happened a lot when her mind was fully engaged.

As the proctor checked her out, she looked over to where Starfleet's work area had been moved from the day before. It was open and deserted. She'd expected Spock to finish early, but she still felt a little emptier when she saw he wasn't there. Maybe her display last night had cooled whatever interest he might have had in her.

The proctor seemed to be taking forever, and she shifted from one foot to the other nervously. More than once, she had to stop her herself from drumming her fingers against the table, from tapping her leg, from rubbing her arms. But given the look the proctor gave her as she verified her codes and checked her equipment, she'd failed miserably at keeping her impatience hidden.

After what seemed like a small eternity, particularly when compared to how time had disappeared during the round, she was excused, and she headed to where she'd arranged to meet Sophie. Nyota sped up until she was practically running through the hall to retrieve her comm and check her messages.

Her flatmate waited at the bottom of the wide, turning stone staircase that led from the entry lobby into the hall holding her coat and bag. "I watched the whole thing, and you were brilliant!" Sophie engulfed her in a sloppy, loose-limbed hug.

"I think you're right."

"Well, look who's full of themselves."

Nyota wobbled when Sophie released her and shoved her things into her arms. "I thought you said I was brilliant." She fumbled with her coat, nearly dropping it as she dug for her comm which was buried at the bottom of her bag where she'd tossed it that morning when her message queue had been disappointingly empty.

"When I say it, it's a compliment, but when you say it, it's pure ego," Sophie told her airily. Nyota ignored the scowl the other girl aimed at her and scrolled through her messages. And then Sophie poked her. "Anything exciting?"

"You mean more exciting than you telling me I'm an egotist?" The emptiness in Nyota's chest burrowed deeper as her fingers skimmed impatiently over the small screen of her comm.

There was the usual collection of announcements and updates from her college, a message from Jasper suggesting they get together so he could "study" her curves and angles, and another from her friend Candace who was having a bunch of girls over that night for wine and holovids. But there was nothing from Spock. She told herself that it couldn't have been more than a half hour since he finished, and he just hadn't had a chance to contact her yet, but it did nothing to reassure her.

"Anything exciting?" Sophie repeated, peering over her shoulder.

Nyota snapped her comm closed. "Jasper's on the prowl again, and Candace is having people over tonight."

"Well, you'll want to let them both know you're not available." Sophie grinned. Her smile was just a little too wide, and her eyes a little too bright. "I've figured out what you're going to do to make yesterday morning up to me."

"You mean my, and I quote, 'brilliant' performance wasn't good enough for you?"

"Please, you only did as expected." Sophie walked out onto the street, and Nyota hurried after her, becoming tangled up in the long strap of her bag as she tried to sling it over her head and pull her coat on at the same time. "Yesterday's queen bitch routine is still unrepented for."

"I hesitate to ask." She didn't like the look Sophie was giving her or the smile that was only growing more self-satisfied.

"Would I ask you to do anything you didn't want to do?"

"Do I even need to dignify that?"

"Ha, ha." Even though her tone was flat, Sophie's innocent. gleeful expression didn't waver. "It's nothing. It's practically less than nothing. Martin's bringing his Vulcan along on our date, and you're coming as our fourth."

"No." Nyota stopped in the middle of the pavement and twisted the strap of her bag around her fingers. She'd given Spock her comm code hoping he might contact her, even if it was just to talk about the round. She had no interest in being forced on him like an arranged marriage.

It took Sophie a few steps to realize she alone, and when she did, she spun around and stormed back to Nyota. "I don't recall giving you a choice. And I also don't see why there's a problem. You two seemed pretty cozy last night."

Nyota didn't answer. She only tugged the front of her coat closed and folded her arms over her chest.

Seeing that she was getting nowhere, Sophie dropped her high-handed manner. "I think this could be really good for you. You like him. I can tell, and you haven't actually liked anyone in a long time. But it's your decision. If you're in, I need you ready for drinks at half after six. If you're not in, give me some warning, so I can rearrange things."

Sophie turned and walked away, and Nyota stared after her until she disappeared around the next corner, not certain what to do. She looked around, noting how relatively empty the streets were since the University was between terms. At least she was near her college. She walked the few blocks to Balliol with a vague idea of having lunch. Maybe food and the quiet of the library would help her figure it out.

-oOo-

Three hours later, Nyota was hiding in the Balliol Library stacks. She loved the beautiful, old building with its elaborately carved bookcases, decorative plaster ceilings, and paned and leaded windows. The dry, clean smell of the old-fashioned paper and leather-bound books reminded her of her grandfather's study back home. That she had access to the library 24 hours a day only made it better.

She'd become well-acquainted with the building her first year when her roommate at the time started sneaking her boyfriend into their room. Although she hadn't been sexually inexperienced when she left home, the live sex show on near-constant rotation some nights was beyond her comfort zone, and she'd pulled at least one all-nighter in the library almost every week.

In a way, Nyota was glad because when she started at the Academy, she knew sleep deprivation wouldn't be anything she couldn't handle. Even when she'd started seeing Charlie after her first term, she'd sneak away from his flat hours before dawn to hole herself away with the books, immersed in languages or numbers.

At least living with Sophie, she had her own bedroom and damned good sound-proofing. But that first year, the library had been her sanctuary.

Today, she was tucked away in a narrow aisle in front of a window overlooking the Garden Quad. At first glance, she looked like she was studying the network of complex figures on the PADD she was bent over, but her mind was somewhere else. Nyota turned the problem of Spock, and Sophie's grand scheme, over and over and examined it from every side until she was mentally exhausted and tempted to just chuck the whole thing and go to bed. She'd almost decided to do just that when her comm buzzed.

It was probably some contrite, funny message from Sophie. Maybe something with pornographic animation backed by an Orion technobeat. She tapped the PADD screen to transfer the message and opened it.

But it was only Jasper why wondering she hadn't responded to his earlier text, and she deleted the message. He was partly responsible for her current dark mood because he'd positioned himself near the door of the Junior Common Room. She'd been trying to avoid him, and there'd been no way to get lunch without passing right by him. The only reason she hadn't walked right into him was because his voice carried, and she'd heard him well before he could see her.

Bed was seeming like a better and better idea, but she had to figure out this thing with Spock. And before Jasper started combing the library for her, which was usually the next step in his ritual stalking. Maybe she could just ask Sophie to get Spock's comm code from Martin ,and she could ask the him if he was interested in coming over and joining her between the sheets.

That thought slammed down in front of her like a wall, and she could almost hear her mind come skidding to a stop. God, Sophie was such a bad influence.

There couldn't be any other reason she'd even think about going to bed with someone she'd just met and didn't know. Even if Spock was tall, and lean, and really handsome. And intelligent. He was probably really interesting, too. And he smelled good.

Nyota shook herself and redoubled her efforts to focus on her notes, but now that she had imagined him in her bed, she found it hard to think of anything else. Anything except for the heat she felt when he looked at her and his calloused fingertips scraping over her skin. What would he do if she asked?

With a groan, she buried her face in her hands, and she stayed there, frozen, her breath warming the hollow created between her palms and her lips. She was only going to make herself crazy trying to figure out what he was thinking. She'd given him her comm code, and he hadn't used it. That was that. Even if he was only interested in her on an intellectual level, he would have contacted her by now. Wouldn't he?

Except, he'd agreed to drinks, and if he already knew he was going to see her that night, there'd be no need. And what if Martin had railroaded him into it the way Sophie had with her? In that case, she'd be in exactly the same fix.

Maybe if she spent a little more time with him, she could figure out whether this thing she felt around him was completely in her head. If it was, they could still talk. He _was_ probably really interesting, growing up on a different planet, in a culture she'd only had a very narrow, peripheral exposure to up until now. The news media never talked about him, either, which was puzzling since he was the first Vulcan to enlist in Starfleet since its inception. That would be fascinating to hear about. If nothing else, she could ask him about the Academy. And it couldn't hurt to wear nice knickers, just in case.

She looked out the window. It was starting to get dark. If she was going, she had to get moving. Nyota grabbed her PADD and was shoving it into her bag when she heard footsteps behind her.

"Uhura," Jasper stage-whispered from the end of the aisle. "Thank god, you're consistent. I hadn't heard from you, so I thought we might discuss this face-to-face."

Nyota pulled her jacket on and squared her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Jasper. I already have a date tonight." She brushed past him and started towards the exit before he had a chance to react. If she was lucky, he wouldn't follow her.

-oOo-

"I know, I know. I'm late. Jasper cornered me in the stacks and I had to get rid of him." Nyota shed her hat and coat and kicked off her shoes at the door.

Sophie glanced up at her from her perch on the sofa where she sat painting her toenails. "You should have never kissed him that one time. And you're too nice to him now. That's why he keeps coming back."

"I finally had to be blunt with him, so we'll see if it takes." Dealing with Jasper had taken even longer than she'd thought it might, and he'd followed her halfway home before she'd convinced him to let her alone. "I'm going to take a shower and wash my hair."

Nyota shut her bedroom door behind her, stripped off her clothes, and wrapped her dressing gown around her. She had just pulled her hair down from the ponytail she'd put it in that morning and was rubbing her scalp to try and get the blood flowing back into her head when her door swung open. Sophie stood framed in the doorway, her toes flexed away from the floor to keep from smudging her toenails.

"You're going?"

"Of course," She slipped past her roommate and hurried down the hall to the bathroom. Sophie hobbled after her as quickly as her varnish-wet toes would let her, but Nyota shut herself in programmed her shower cycle. "Why wouldn't I go?" she called through the door.

She stepped under the nozzle and let the hot water soak her from head to toe and chase off the chill from her short walk home. This might have been her favorite part of living with Sophie. The showers at the college were sonics, and they never made her feel truly clean. She scrubbed herself down and then carefully washed her hair, working from her scalp to the ends to avoid tangling the dark, heavy strands.

At the end of the water cycle, the dryer hummed to life and evaporated the moisture from her skin and hair as quickly as she'd drenched it. She was thankful, not for the first time, for the biannual injections she got from her doctor that caused her hair to grow straight instead of in its natural curls. For as long as she could remember, she'd worn it that way. First, because when she was too young to take care of her hair herself, her mother had straightened it for her every Sunday before church, slathering on a temporary relaxer when she took her bath. And then, when she was older, because she didn't feel like herself with it any other way. Sometimes she was tempted to cut it all off like her mother and little sister. She never did.

When she returned to her room, Nyota found that clothes had been left out for her across her bed. "Sophie, what's this?"

"Your wardrobe's hopeless. You dress like a student." Sophie's answer was muffled by the wall that separated their bedrooms.

"I am a student."

"Don't worry. It's mostly your own clothes. I just added something slightly more grown up. It's a little obvious, but not slutty."

"So nothing you'd wear."

"Precisely."

Nyota inspected the small pile of clothing and immediately spotted what didn't belong, a puddle of wine red silk just thick enough to be opaque. "There's no bra," she yelled through the wall.

Sophie appeared at the doorway wearing a one-shouldered, skin-tight, sheer dress in navy blue. The fabric was shot through with silver, and it sparkled like the night sky. Under the dress, she was completely naked, bare to the world except for the almost completely transparent cloth.

"You wear a bra with that shirt, and I'll have to kill you," Sophie told her. "Speaking of slutty, what do you think?" she asked, gesturing to the dress she wore.

"Please tell me you're going to wear something under that. That's too much nipple for drinks."

"I was afraid of that. Don't worry. I'll take care of it."

"More than those star-shaped pasties from last month."

"You're no fun," Sophie pouted and retreated to her own room, leaving Nyota to inspect the clothes she had picked out for her.

The knickers were black and lacy and barely effective as underthings. They had been a gift from Sophie for her 19th birthday the past December, but at least they were hers. The jeans were hers, too. The metallic gray denim that hugged her leg from hip to ankle like a second skin and generally reserved for nights out. Which this was. The soft suede ankle-high boots were low-heeled and steady on the sometimes uneven streets in the oldest parts of town.

And then there was the scrap of red silk. Which she didn't want to touch because her palms were suddenly clammy and damp. Besides, she didn't need to pick it up to see why Sophie hadn't left her a bra.

Nyota stood rooted to the floor while she stared at the almost sheer fabric. It was, of course, only a suggestion. Sophie wasn't going to force her to wear it. After all, it was only drinks. But she really wanted it to be more than drinks, and her heart skipped ahead of her as she fingered the soft material. It almost seemed to glow. God, she hoped she wasn't about to make a fool of herself.

* * *

><p><em>AN: As per usual, I own none of this. Except the parts that I made up myself. I also do not make a dime from this. Or any other denomination, for that matter.<em>

_I'd like to apologize for how late this installment is. I had originally planned to post this a week ago, but two things came up. One, I finally wrote what we've been calling the infamous chapter 13 (at least I think it's chapter 13, my numbering is so off). Up until now, it's only been an outline, but since I'm up to posting chapter 7, at this point, it was time. You'll understand when you get to it. The second thing that happened was that the second and third and fourth drafts of these next three chapters are taking a lot longer than I'd thought. I think there's a lot to be said about putting something down long enough to forget that you wrote it because I cringed at points, and I'm hoping that I've managed to fix the most glaring problems. Anyway, thank you all so much for hanging in there. I appreciate each and every one of you._

_From here on out, batten down the hatches. Things are starting to ramp up, and they're not going to slow down. _


End file.
